David Gaynon wrote:
> The recent exchanges on RIM in the university context encouraged me to do a little online searching on the ownership of research data in the academy.  Given the growing multi institution collaboration this can become quite complex.  For example suppose a dozen universities collaborate on a joint study.  They establish a database that is managed by University A, backed up by University B, and audited by University C.  Who owns the data?  Just to make it interesting suppose there are 10 funding sources not including support given by the involved universities.
>
> In searching around I found the following Australian study that attempts to address this issue.
>
> http://eprints.qut.edu.au/archive/00008865/01/8865.pdf
>
> I also discovered some sources believe that it is a big mistake for the academy to commercialize science because it introduces significant incentives toward research bias and results in obstructing the free flow of research data.
David & RM Folk,

There has long been a debate over the commercialization of academic or 
"practical" research.  I won't go into it as you can probably find fifty 
books on the subject at your nearest library.  The one aspect that 
really bothers me, and others, revolves around the creation of new 
drugs.  the taxpayer pays for the basic research, the taxpayer pays for 
the animal testing, the taxpayer pays for the clinical testing in whole 
or in part, the taxpayer serves as the, usually, unpaid test bed for the 
drug in clinical trials, the taxpayer pays for the purchase of the drugs 
(if successfully developed) through medicaid/medicare or direct or 
insurance payments and the pharmaceutical companies raise the price 10% 
per year and spend huge amounts on advertising.  It's called corporate 
welfare.  Talk about redistributing the wealth (upward).  Just my 
thoughts after studying this paradigm for many years.  The bottom line 
is, that battle has been lost.  For public universities who are now 
"state assisted" (25% of the University of Arizona's funding is of State 
origin) the only way to keep going is through research dollars and 
commercialization of academic research in all fields.  That's why most 
universities have "spin-off companies", industrial parks and incubator 
facilities for commercialization.  If one doesn't want this then one 
needs to demand central funding for universities which would free up 
non-commercial or alternative research paths.  I don't think so.

As to collaborative efforts and research records, this is why RMs should 
be involved in the original contract negotiations as to which 
institution holds or is to be the depository for the project records.  
Fat chance.  These decisions are always post hoc.  In my experience it 
has turned out that none of the research parties are the owner of record 
but NARA is.  As noted earlier, it can get way complicated.  Dick King, 
University of Arizona.

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