Norms and the Sharing of Research Materials and Tacit Knowledge
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Description
As discussed in Wesley Cohen and John Walsh’s Chapter 1 in this volume, recent empirical studies have been documented that scientists experience increasing difficulty obtaining tangible research materials from other scientists, while they express fewer concerns than many had anticipated about do-it-yourself tools that can be mad in the laboratory, even when those tools are patented. In this Chapter I use a rational choice model of social norms to elucidate some factors that affect the likelihood that a research community will adopt a sharing norm. Based on those factors, I discuss some means by which sharing of tangible research materials can be encouraged. The analysis focuses attention on the costs to individual researchers of sharing research materials with others in a research community and suggest that sharing norms will be strengthened by initiatives aimed at (1) reducing sharing costs through standardization, (2) spreading sharing costs through central distribution, (3) providing rewards in proportion to the extent to which materials are shared, and (4) reducing the private payoffs of exclusivity. Though motivated by studies of sharing of research materials, the analysis also applies to sharing of extensive datasets and tacit knowledge. Scientists who invent research tools are part of a more general category of user innovators motivated by an intention to use, rather than sell, an innovative technology. Case studies suggest that informal collaboration and sharing among innovators – what Allen has called ‘collective invention’ and user innovation researchers often call ‘free revealing’ – is relatively common in communities of user innovators. While research tool sharing norms are illuminated by the user innovation framework, the instability of sharing norms for research materials also provides a cautionary not regarding the potential for collaborative user innovation in communities of competitors.
Source Publication
Working within the Boundaries of Intellectual Property: Innovation Policy for the Knowledge Society
Source Editors/Authors
Rochelle C. Dreyfuss, Harry First, Diane L. Zimmerman
Publication Date
2010
Recommended Citation
Strandburg, Katherine J., "Norms and the Sharing of Research Materials and Tacit Knowledge" (2010). Faculty Chapters. 1678.
https://gretchen.law.nyu.edu/fac-chapt/1678
