Secrecy is increasing in step with competition

Abstract

Sir-The policy on release of unpublished data from large genome centres has generated considerable discussion and some confusion, as your Editorial "Sacrifice for the greater good?" makes plain (Nature 421, 875; 2003). In our view, data sets from large, centralized, expensive genome data-collection projects should be freely available to the entire scientific community, immediately and with no restrictions or conditions. Our position is that pre-publication release of large genome data sets is a special case, and not a principle that should be applied "throughout the world of biology", as was asserted in your editorial. Large genome sequencing has become an expensive, factory-style operation, in which economies of scale can only be realized by very large centres. Large data production centres, established and supported by the scientific community, represent a different model of science from traditional investigator-initiated projects. We argue that they need to operate under different rules. The broader scientific community supports the highly centralized model represented by the US large-scale genome centres (funded via the National Institutes of Health and the Department of Energy) on the condition that everyone in this community gets equal access to the data. If this is the case, everyone wins: large data sets are generated at the lowest cost and greatest speed, and scientific work progresses on multiple fronts without delay. In contrast, if genome centres restrict their data and get preferential access to it, then some members of the community will no longer support monopolistic funding models (in which large centres sequence one genome after another without peer review of each project). Instead, they will demand the right to compete with these empires, especially for the most scientifically desirable genomes. Other scientists, especially bioinformaticians, will seek to relocate to the centres to gain the advantage of early data access. Data restrictions will therefore promote factionalization where we should be seeking efficiencies of scale, and centralization where we should be promoting diversity. We agree with your editorial that the proposed new policy, recently released for comment by the US genome centres (see www.genome.gov/page.cfm?pageID= 10506537), is ambiguous. It states that genome sequence data "should be available

When do researchers collaborate? Toward a model of collaboration propensity

“…Additionally, broad surveys of scientists (W. O. Hagstrom, 1974;Walsh & Hong, 2003) suggest an unwillingness to discuss research currently underway due to fear of being anticipated, or "scooped" by colleagues. Data from the more recent of these studies suggests an increase in such tendencies, particularly in the biological sciences.…”

“…This variable will be measured using two items from Walsh and Hong's (2003) survey and one that I developed. Given the individualistic nature of this sort of competition, it is expected that:…”

“…Four scale items were used to measure scientific competition and were based on items used in prior studies by Walsh and Hong (2003) and Hagstrom (1974). Cronbach's alpha was calculated to be .61.…”

Evidence and anecdotes: an analysis of human gene patenting controversies

“…There is also substantial empirical evidence that university researchers are becoming more secretive and less willing to share research results or materials [31][32][33][34][35][36]22]. The causes of this secrecy, however, are still in dispute.…”

“…In particular, we cannot determine the impact of patents themselves on secrecy, in part because many studies of academic secrecy [31,32,36] use composite measures and, as a result, it is difficult to tease out specific causes thereof. Still, Walsh and Hong (2003) [33] and Walsh, Cho and Cohen (2005) [22] find that patents per se have little effect on discussing on-going research or on sharing of research materials. In contrast, several studies have found that commercial activity, as well as scientific competition and the cost and effort involved in sharing, all have negative effects on open science [22,31,32,36].…”