As a greater focus is placed on open innovation and collaboration, the UILO is supporting the free sharing of research outputs through data and material repositories or open source where these channels provide the greatest opportunities for research tools, data, discoveries and code to have a meaningful impact and to develop research communities working towards shared goals.
In recent years the emergence of open source software in particular has had a profound effect on the availability and development of many widely adopted technologies, and is a key part of the momentum shift towards open innovation.
As multiple open source repositories, models and communities develop, the UILO will provide guidance as to the opportunities that each offers. This may be building a research community around a given project, or in some instances may include business opportunities stemming from open source development and licensing.
The UILO can also provide guidance on the implications of incorporating open source code into research projects or providing material to open source repositories.
Providing open access to data and materials developed in the course of a research project can significantly contribute to further discovery and innovation within a given field.
In many disciplines repositories are available for research outputs to be contributed and accessed on a non-proprietary basis. Increasingly, recipients of grant funding from foundations are being asked to contribute their data and material developed through this funding to enable other researchers in the same field to work towards solving health or environmental challenges.
Various groups, including the OECD, NIH and AUTM, have developed principles and guidelines to facilitate access to research artifacts such as tools, data, software, and biological materials. In accordance with these and other guidelines, the UILO will focus on increasing access to, dissemination of, and use of research outputs that frequently impact health or help to build innovation networks.
