CGIAR's open access and international collaboration

On the 'biodiversity commons' mailing list: David Duthie (UNEP/DGEF) writes:

"A global biological commons in genetic resources was implemented in the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) through a system of international nurseries with a breeding hub, free sharing of germplasm, collaboration in information collection, the development of human resources, and an international collaborative network. The success of an open-source system such as that implemented by CGIAR depends primarily on key people and leadership. Derek Byerlee and Jesse Dublin share these insights in Crop improvement in the CGIAR as a global success story of open access and international collaboration published in The International Journal of the Commons.

Open-source collaboration includes (i) free distribution and redistribution of the original materials, (ii) free redistribution of materials derived from the originals, (iii) full sharing of information, including pedigrees and grain yield, disease resistance and other information relating to the materials, (iv) nondiscrimination in participation in the networks, and (v) intellectual property rights on final materials that, if used, did not prevent their further use in research.

The history and impacts of the international wheat program are discussed to illustrate the open-source system. It also highlights the challenges of maintaining and evolving such a system over the long-term."

View the article

Open educational resources - State of the art

The February 2009 issue of Open Learning is dedicated to Open Educational Resources (OER) - "teaching, learning and research resources that reside in the public domain or have been released under an intellectual property license that permits their free use or re-purposing by others."

The special issue, appropriately openly accessible, "present an overview of the OER movement, and the perspective is largely that of the OER provider."

In the words of Susan D'Antoni: "The production and use of OER raises a number of issues, and the concluding article addresses a crucial concern that brings us back to the perspective of the first article - open licensing. If materials are to be openly and freely shared, they must be licensed in a manner that promotes this objective. Ahrash Bissell's article aims to explain the logic of the open licensing that is essential to OER and to explore related considerations."

Looking for OER? Try out the search page by the Commonwealth of learning