Human Genome Project

Characteristics

Via [1]:

• External Link: Human Genome Project, http://www.ornl.gov/sci/techresources/Human_Genome/home.shtml

o Products: Data and Tools. Genome sequence available publicly o Governance: funded through the NIH o Comment: Another interesting instance of the commons - the government used the power of funding to mandate open access requirements from the organizations which participated.

Discussion

Via [2]:

"The Human Genome Project was the mapping of the entire human genome using an open approach. Funded primarily by US government funding emerging initially from the Department of Energy (representing the roots of genomic research in the push to understand mutation emerging from radiation exposure), the HGP was a classic “big science” project. An enormous amount of money was committed, a small number of centers were chosen to receive that money, and there was an expectation that the data resulting would be an open product. The primary regulation in our nomenclature was normative and not legal – the data was in the public domain, but there were some expectations of scientific behavior and the right to punish violators was reserved, but the punishment would be in the discipline via peer review and grantmaking review and not via the courts.

The norms that emerged from the Human Genome Project served as the basis for setting norms for the development of common‐based practices in the genomics field and also for the understanding of the legal rules related to database protection. For instance, in the in‐take angle, with the HGP it was understood that a limited group of people could contribute since there was a lack of capacity and infrastructure. Not many had the scientists, the labs or the machines to develop the study – a marked characteristic of differentiation when you compare the HGP with Open Source projects, where there is a democratization of means via ubiquitous cheap desktop computing and ICTs.

However, after some time into the project development, the sponsors of the project – the government – realized that the people part of the project’s team was not posting the data they were producing and the competitor Celera was rapidly creating a private version of the genome via new technology (itself developed at least partially with HGP funding). This was the origin of the codified and formalized norms known as the Bermuda Rules, further developed during the Fort Lauderdale meeting. The Rules were simple and clear: all data was in the public domain, and it would be posted online with 24 hours of coming off the machines. However, scientists using the data were expected to check and see if the data had been “published” yet (the fuzzy part) and if it was unpublished they were expected to honor some norms about the data.

The norms that emerged from the HGP were the inspiration for a norm‐setting process in the HapMap project. However, when the HapMap came to life, the Open Source Movement was already a well developed and studied movement. The FLOSS movement inspired the HapMap to adopt, in its beginning, a more regulated approach, through the institution of a “click wrap” contract among the HapMap participants during its in‐take and out‐take process. The sharing norms instituted by the HapMap contract highly regulated the publication process and also tried to interfere in the exploitation (more precisely – the abuse) of patents that may have emerged from the HapMap out‐puts."