HapMap

Characteristics

Via [1]:

• External Link: HapMap, http://www.hapmap.org/

o Products: Data. Coordination between researchers in Canada, China, Japan, Nigeria, United Kingdom and the United States to identify disease-causing genes. Data released into the public domain o Governance: Combination of both public and private organizations (http://www.hapmap.org/groups.html) o Another good instance of commons-based production

Discussion

Via [2]:

"However, before the HapMap Out‐Take process became a Open Unregulated Commons, it was an Open Regulated Commons by a contract that asked for “not to reduce access to the data” and a kind of “share‐alike” for patents generated through the use of the data from the HapMap. This approach, as can be seen in the project’s site, was abandoned for a unregulated environment – the HapMap Out‐take = Open Unregulated Commons. The reasons were: (1) the project was finished, so there was no reason to protect the data anymore and (2) it was preventing data integration. It turned out that the clickwrap license was less effective at preventing patents than the simple creation of prior art, and its effect on data integration was felt to be toxic enough so that the contract was removed. (See: http://www.hapmap.org/cgi‐perl/registration + Science Vol. 312. no. 5777, p. 1131 ‐ The HapMap Gold Rush: Researchers Mine a Rich Deposit)

It is interesting to track that the desired community regulation moved from norms to contract back to norms, and that the desire for the community output to serve as an input into new systems (like integrated genomic global databases) was an important factor in moving back to norms."