Abstract
Developments within bioinformatics and software for data exchange in the life sciences raise important new questions for social informatics. In this paper, I analyse the role of property rights in information in directing these technological developments in the direction of certain social values. In particular, I focus on initiatives for networking distributed databases, operating both on a global scale (such as the Global Biodiversity Information Facility) and in more single-issue networks (such as the European Human Frozen Tumour Tissue Bank). Three institutional models for developing such distributed networks for sharing information are presented and briefly discussed.
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© 2006 International Federation for Information Processing
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Dedeurwaerdere, T. (2006). Databases, Biological Information and Collective Action. In: Berleur, J., Nurminen, M.I., Impagliazzo, J. (eds) Social Informatics: An Information Society for all? In Remembrance of Rob Kling. HCC 2006. IFIP International Federation for Information Processing, vol 223. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-37876-3_13
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-37876-3_13
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