In this spirit, anybody can endorse the Manifesto or, in case of disagreement, discuss and improve it online.

Software is a cornerstone of science. Without software, twenty-first century science would be impossible. Without better software, science cannot progress. But the culture and institutions of science have not yet adjusted to this reality. We need to reform them to address this challenge, by adopting these five principles:

Code – All source code written specifically to process data for a published paper must be available to the reviewers and readers of the paper.

Copyright – The copyright ownership and license of any released source code must be clearly stated.

Citation – Researchers who use or adapt science source code in their research must credit the code’s creators in resulting publications.

Credit – Software contributions must be included in systems of scientific assessment, credit, and recognition.

Curation – Source code must remain available, linked to related materials, for the useful lifetime of the publication.

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Genetic testing promises to put the ability to decide about our life choices in our hands, as well as help solve crucial health problems by preventing the insurgence of diseases. But what happens when these exams are managed by private companies in a free market? Public communication and marketing have proven to be crucial battlefields on which companies companies need to engage in order to emerge. This issue of JCOM tries to shed some light on the communication and marketing practices used by private companies that sell direct-to-consumer genetic testing, from single genetic mutations to whole genome sequencing.

As Levina and Quinn point out, “these companies radically expand the definition of a patient by claiming all consumers are simply pre-symptomatic patients. Moreover, by placing genomic data on both the marketplace and cyberspace, personal genomic companies seek to create new avenues of research that alter how we define (and access) research agendas and human subjects.”

In her article on the deeper relationship between genomics and communication, Jenny Reardon argues that “the communication problem these companies face runs much deeper. It is a problem that lies at the heart of any genomics: the very understanding of communication and information around which genomics is built. While the value of genomic information for persons has been widely questioned, questions about the very notion of information that undergirds the production of genomic information rarely, if ever, has been broached.“

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“During the past two decades, hacking has chiefly been associated with software development. This is now changing as new walks of life are being explored with a hacker mindset, thus bringing back to memory the origin of hacking in hardware development. Now as then, the hacker is characterised by an active approach to technology, undaunted by hierarchies and established knowledge, and finally a commitment to sharing information freely.

In this special issue of Critical Studies in Peer Production, we will investigate how these ideas and practices are spreading. Two cases which have caught much attention in recent years are open hardware development and garage biology. The creation of hacker/maker-spaces in many cities around the world has provided an infrastructure facilitating this development. We are looking for both empirical and theoretical contributions which critically engage with this new phenomenon.

Every kind of activity which relates to hacking is potentially of interest. Some theoretical questions which might be discussed in the light of this development include, but are not restricted to, the politics of hacking, the role of lay expertise, how the line between the community and markets is negotiated, how development projects are managed, and the legal implications of these practices. We welcome contributions from all the social sciences, including science & technology studies, design and art-practices, anthropology, legal studies, etc.

The special issue is edited by Johan Söderberg and Alessandro Delfanti. Interested authors should submit an abstract of no more than 500 words by July 10, 2011. Authors of accepted papers will be notified by July 31. All papers will be subject to peer review before being published.”

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Sage was born to apply the free software model to genomics, a field where the need for open datasets and for cooperation among scientists is seen as a key issue: the wisdom of the crowd could be crucial to improve drug development and personalize medicine.

“We see this becoming like the Google of biological science. It will be such an informative platform, you won’t be able to make decisions without it,” Sage co-founder Eric Schadt says. He adds: “We want this to be like the Internet. Nobody owns it.”

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JCOM published three interviews of authors expert in communication and media on different fields strongly influenced by participatory communication practices: Anabela Carvalho on global warming and climate change, Pieter Maeseele on technological risks and Denise Silber on eHealth and Health 2.0.
The focus is on active public participation in the practices of information production and sharing, and on the way in which scientific knowledge is reconstructed and negotiated in the Web 2.0 arena. The re-distribution of social power by means of Web 2.0 is a key issue, and new sensible communication practices and professionals are needed in order to maintain the democratic function of journalism.

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The Critical Art Ensemble (CAE) is a collective of artists and activists based in the USA that work on the boundaries between science, technology and radical politics. In 2004 Steve Kurtz, one of the members of CAE, was arrested by the FBI under the charge of bioterrorism after the police found the home lab and the bacteria cultures that were used for CAE projects on the politics of biotechnology. Their book Molecular Invasion theorized the use of do-it-yourself biology as a tool to challenge the structures of power within the biotech industry and the role of biotechnology in today’s capitalist societies. In this interview, Kurtz explores the differences between CAE and the emergent movement of garage biology – such as the DIYbio network – its political role and its future.

What are the main differences between CAE and the new wave of garage biotechnology?

CAE has a politics. We are not interested in science for its own sake, but in how its materials, processes, and discourses can be marshaled in the struggle against authoritarian practices.

How and why garage biologists might be persecuted by the authorities?

From the point of view of the authorities, the three sins of garage biotech are:

1. Referencing the politics of biotech (as opposed to presenting it as value neutral).

2. Suggesting that policy regarding research initiatives should have public input,
rather than being the sole domain of corporate, military, and scientific experts.

3. Combining biotech research or usage with political activism.

Doing any or all of these will get a reaction from authorities in the U.S. Happily, in the post-Bush era the intensity of legal violence has been reduced a little. The Justice Department appears to be depoliticizing to some extent.

Can you see any real sinner around nowadays?

One of the greats right now is Adam Zaretsky. He covers his radicalism with an excentricity that makes his provocations less scary to authority. We think he is perceived as a lone crazy without much of political agenda. But what he suggests really pushes the limits, as with his germ line interventions or his liberation of recombinant ornamental creatures.

Do you think that DIYbio and today’s garage biologists have a critical approach to science?

It’s premature to say at this point. Public labs and supply shops are hardly common yet. It’s not like with information and communication technologies (ICT), where everyone owns a computer and there are distribution outlets in every mall. What little we know of this emerging subculture is that there are a number of curious enthusiasts, and those coming out of the green movement have a more critical approach. But at this point, everything is so far off the mainstream cultural radar that we really have no way to know what the tendencies are now or what they will be in the future.

But isn’t it already political to claim that anybody should be free to pursue biological research in one’s garage, outside institutional settings? That’s what DIYbio does…

Yes, it is. One can be disciplined just for making that statement. It also implies a defense of amateurism. To say that there is a need for biological literacy (especially during a revolution in biotechnology) is also political. However, stating and even enacting these imperatives is not enough. There needs to be more than a modest, latent progressive politics if we are to change the current situation.

Do you think that DIYbio will be able to avoid the contradictions and controversies surrounding garage biotech? Will they suffer backlashes?

If any group can avoid the backlash, it’s them. Their ties to universities and their commitment to keeping politics on the back burner should keep them in the realm of legitimacy, but one never knows. If bio-paranoia ramps up again, even they could become a target.

They are directly engaging in a discussion with the FBI, for example, and with the US Presidential Commission on Bioethics.

Speaking with the PCB, OK; but speaking with the FBI endangers everyone. To the FBI we are the enemy (although many agents feel that way about all science and the university in general, which they mistakenly believe are bastions of the liberal to radical left; many agents are radical right Christians and Mormons and hence have a real dislike for science). The FBI itself is a really schizophrenic institution—a kind of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. On the one hand, they have put away dangerous criminals, white-collar criminals, corrupt politicians, and organized crime figures in a manner befitting an upright law enforcement agency. However, there is another FBI that from its inception has mercilessly and often illegally attacked the left. This is the FBI that is coming to visit garage hackers. And believe us, the Mr. Hyde version of the FBI does not care about justice or rights—it’s about ideological enforcement.

So what is garage biology? A new site where scientific research takes place?

No. Science is much too capital-intensive to be done in a garage. However, technological invention is another story. While we may not see anything groundbreakingly new come out of a garage, we could very well see existing technology mutated in ways that offer new possibilities.

An attempt at opening up science’s institutional boundaries? Is it about participation and democracy?

It could be that, but to quote William Gibson, it’s the street finding its own uses for things.

An individual right?

If one thinks free speech is a right, then yes.

A new type of innovation regime attuned to the needs of capitalism?

It could be that. Capital seems to be arguing with itself over the function of garage hackers and basement tinkerers. Unlike in ICT where open source seems to be emerging as the better business plan, biotech seems to be going to the privatizers. It appears these industries want everything to be proprietary. And if the ultimate goal of patenting all life forms is to be accomplished, indulging property scofflaws seems unlikely, but not out of the question. If profitable applications are discovered in garages, this situation could change; however, CAE would not bet on it.

Open source is emerging as a new mode of knowledge production and diffusion even within corporate genomics. I think DIYbio and other actors are not only pushing towards more open models. They are mostly concerned with the creation of a new entrepreneurial environment. Their “enemies” are incumbents, more than patents. Their Microsoft and IBM are universities and big corporations, even though they rely on those institutions to get access to materials, tools, informations, skills… isn’t this similar to what happened with the rise of free software and open source software?

Free software might be a slightly different story, but the similarity between some of the new bio initiatives and open source is certainly there. Yes, many are working on models that will yield profit (unlike free software) by improving business environments, and yes, their enemies are those who want to continue with the traditional proprietary model of making profits.

But currently, garage biologists are not innovating or producing “good science” according to any standard. Yet they are receiving lots of attention from the media and the government. Is it just hype? I think that their symbolic power is huge and they manage it very carefully – depicting themselves as “hackers” of biology for example.

Capital’s quest for novelty has something to do with it, but CAE is not sure we agree that garage science is getting so much attention. An occasional mention in science journals or an even rarer mention in the popular press covers the print. There are a few art exhibitions. No popular movies have been made, nor books written. CAE doesn’t even see the level of passing fascination that ICT hackers got in the late eighties and early nineties. CAE had hoped that by this time we would have made reasonable inroads in popular consciousness and in activist communities, but no such luck yet.

I disagree. They recently made it to Nature. They’ve been covered by the general press, and I mean The Economist, BBC, etc., and they are pretty aware that the press is an important battlefield. They are way more visible than most important research projects… Ok, we don’t have popular novels or movies. But don’t you think DIYbio is more a communication project than a scientific one? Their powerful narrative is what they’ve got and they know that very well.

Pretty much all amateur initiatives are more about culture and/or politics, than about science. Hence DIYbio is a great human-interest story, but until there is a real culture of garage biologist visible in everyday life (like skate culture or vegans) that’s all it will be. Right now it’s just a novelty.

What can we do to give citizen science a critical direction again?

We don’t think citizen science ever had a critical direction, which was why it was tolerated in past decades. This is the big problem; no inspirational micro-histories exists yet, and we believe this is a key need for the emergence of a science-based activism that moves beyond progressive scientists and their organizations. It’s really up to the youth generation to start it.

Which issues would you like to see addressed by a critical citizen science movement?

We would start with issues contested by the right that have no scientific basis for contestation, such as global warming or stem cell research. The more scientific narratives become a part of everyday life, the less likely is the possibility of making anti-science campaigns (like the right’s “junk science” campaign, which was used to explain away any scientific conclusion the right did
not like). Then would come the re-evaluation of topics like nuclear power. It’s not the 70s anymore. The world has grown too complex in terms of population and energy needs. The old narratives have to be rethought, and new tactical solutions devised.

What is CAE doing right now?

Nothing with the life sciences. CAE is currently working on new, temporary forms of monumentality. We just finished a temporary monument to the appropriation of radiation myths by the state, in which we demonstrate how the U.S. government has used the myth of the “dirty bomb” as a propaganda mechanism to produce the fear that allows for the toleration of war. We are currently working on another temporary monument to economic inequality in the U.S. After 30 years of neoliberal policy, the US has the greatest separation by wealth in the nation’s history, between a tiny population of rich citizens and the mass population of poor and working people. We’ll be marking that victory for the rich—or desperation of the poor, depending on one’s perspective.

Interview by Alessandro Delfanti

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But how do we define Open Science? According to Jason Hoyt of Mendeley, science is open when “it is available to any one in the world to do whatever they like with it”. Victoria Stodden tried to refine this position: “open code is as much an important part of this as much as open data”. Stodden proposal is related to reproducibility: a publishing standard which includes analytical tools, raw data and experimental protocols, giving any scientist the possibility of reproducing a colleague’s experiment. But, as Stodden put it, “we are not updating the social contract, what we’re doing is returning to the scientific method which has been around for hundreds of years. It is what a scientist is supposed to do”. Yet there is a cultural problem: “our adaptation to the technological tools for openness and sharing is not happening fast enough, and is bringing about a credibility crisis” of science.

Michael Neilsen, researcher and blogger, argued that we need “to create new ways for scientists to create reputation, based on new tools”, since the incentive system that drives the scientist’s work (to publish in peer reviewed journals) prevent the community from adopting new solutions. “today’s subsidies (to publish in a journal) prevent science from adopting new technologies and new solutions – scientists are provided incentives to reveal discoveries in older media. Therefore the first open science revolution (sharing results in journals) is now hindering the second open science revolution”. We need a new system which distributes benefits to those scientists who decide to openly share their knowledge and data.

According to Stodden, “younger scientists want to share everything. Older leaders must not just give examples, but also try to provide tools for them to be open”. This means that we need to forge new legal and societal tools for open science and to protect young researchers from the “existential crisis” they live when they switch from a world in which everything is shared, i.e. on social networks, to one in which knowledge is private or secret. In Berkeley interesting technological platforms for sharing were presented, such as BioTorrents, a distribute platform for sharing not only scientific articles but also results, methods, raw data and so on, or CoLab, a massive online cooperation platform which allows researchers to discuss a problem, design an experiment and collectively and continuously peer review the whole process.

Judging from the talks at OSS, there is a huge role for companies and social entrepreneurs. According to Stanford’s Drew Endy, “in 15 to 30 years something really interesting will develop between this two poles: FLOSS and synthetic biology”. Both companies and individuals will be able to make key innovation, outside the walls of universities. And in Berkeley there were lots of small companies, foundations, no-profits and start ups which use open source models of innovation. Will social entrepreneurship give us a cure for cancer or for neglected diseases, personal medicine and clean fuel? We don’t know, but there is at least one thing those actors are providing: a new, broader meaning of “open science”, which is not only the free circulation and sharing of information within the scientific community.

An important part of the open science movement is represented by people who innovate and conduct research outside the boundaries of science’s institutions. Their radical claim for openness and access to scientific knowledge and practices is heating up a debate on the boundaries of contemporary science and on citizen participation not only in decisional processes but also in the scientific enterprise itself. A few examples presented in Berkeley include DIYbio, the network of citizen biologists from wich projects such as OpenPCR and the community lab Biocurious are stemming; MyDaughtersDna, an open platform for the sharing of information about genetic patologies to researchers, phisicians and patients: the Pink Army Cooperative, a no-profit co-op which works on personalized medicine for cancer with an open source attitude – “the first DIY pharmaceutical company”.

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Based on the website kickstarter.com, the successful campaign has now collected more than 10.000 $ from 136 backers. OpenPCR is intended to give garage biologists and community labs an accessible and affordable tool for their researches and manipulations. OpenPCR will be controlled by Arduino boards and completely open source: design documents, software, parts list, kits, and instructions will be available for anybody to build his own OpenPCR for not more than 400$. The goal of its creators is to make OpenPCR available in 3 months.

Like many other garage biology projects, OpenPCR was born with a strong and explicit hacker and P2P attitude. “How are the Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, or Andy Warhol of biotech going to get their start if the simplest biotech tools cost so much?” the call on kickstarter.com states. Besides, part of the project is devoted to the analysis of the role of PCR patents in fostering – or slowing down? – innovation.

It is possible to can track the evolution of OpenPCR through a blog, and in a few days the funded project will start.

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From the introduction: “vast amounts of plant and animal genetic material are collected and microorganisms isolated throughout the world from various habitats and sources, and exchanged in collaborative research networks for the improvement of global food security, public health and climate change mitigation” but “the relatively frictionless exchange of biological materials within a global commons, which prevailed during the early days of modern life sciences, now seems to be reversed. More and more biological materials are enclosed behind national and privatized fences, or only accessible under very restrictive license conditions”.

On the other hand, “due to the dual nature of genetic resources (as a biophysical resource used in current applications and as a living and evolving informational resource which provides basic input for the development of future applications and uses) the line between the market and non-market value of genetic resources is very difficult to draw.”

The special issue is devoted to investigating a new or stronger role of governance to design principles for building the microbial commons. The main argument of this collection of articles mainly coming from international law scholars is that commons governance is based on a variety of governance modes. Namely, “self-governance in global science communities, participatory modes of governance in international non-profit organizations, and conventional intergovernmental negotiation forums.”

In fact, specific governance problems are the biophysical characteristics of the resources: “goods that are more efficiently provided through non-market means (such as open-source collaborations and public provision). Genetic resources are complex goods with both a biophysical and an informational component.” But apart from the long tradition of international cooperation amongst culture collections, the impact of free riding is threat for the long-term sustainability of the commons. That is why the global community of scientits working on microbes needs formal intergovernmental arrangements.

But another important point is the role of self-governance and “the need to go beyond the dissociation between users and producers of knowledge within the commons.” The need to involve the user communities has led to a set of interesting institutional innovations, such as “public genome databases, open source bioinformatics software, and viral licensing by culture collections through so-called legitimate exchange.” And these institutional innovations were not established through governmental or intergovernmental legal or policy arrangements. They were the result of self-governance by the science and microbial culture-collection communities.” We need a legal infrastructure for the commons, as well as a culture rooted in sharing and openess practices.

Dedeurwaerdere concludes that “a mutually supportive relationship between various governance activities is an important feature of a successful genetic resource commons. This can be thought of as an organization with multiple layers of nested enterprises, which has been recognized as an important characteristic of large-scale and robust common pool resource systems”.

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This is not the first time GSK uses open innovation schemas. Last year GSK established a patent pool of drugs and processes for neglected diseases, and during his last speech its CEO Andrew Witty told the press that “Since I took over at GSK I have been focused on changing the business model for the company to improve performance. But equally important is the imperative to earn the trust of society, not just by meeting expectations, but by exceeding them”.

Nature‘s editorial points out the fact that “neglected diseases are a low-risk area for drug companies to experiment with open data” but it recognises the value of this policies and even urges universities – and their often aggressive intellectual property policies – to emulate GlaxoSmithKline.

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