Page:The digital public domain.pdf/127

100 dual equilibrium. On one hand, there exists a formal system of exchange of information resources where, albeit with increasingly restrictive conditions, the highest value transactions take place. On the other hand, there is growing evidence of an informal system where lower value and routine transactions take place without entering into any formal legal undertakings. This system, based on the ties of a close-knit research community, is less restrictive but nevertheless creates club goods closed to distrusted parties and generates potential negative externalities on the quality control of the resources exchanged in cumulative research.

With this perspective, it is because of the concerns for unintended consequences and drawbacks that contractually reconstructed research commons have been proposed. Crucially, the rationale behind such new approaches is twofold. First, coping with the new proprietary framework, research commons envisage new institutional arrangements such as compensatory liability regimes or standardized agreements that contractually regulate the relations between all the participating research communities and their members. Secondly, research commons aim to reconstruct a pre-competitive environment, which has been eroded by the defensive attitude and strategic behaviour adopted by different players in the research community.


 * 2. Economic arguments for and against emerging research commons

Although the narrative account used to justify contractually based research commons seems to provide meaningful arguments, the attitude for their adoption is hardly shared in the policy and academic debate. For this reason, understanding whether contractually based research commons are viable solutions for the management of knowledge production is an empirical and theoretical question of considerable complexity. In this context, it is possible to identify three main economic issues that should be analysed in order to understand the strengths and weaknesses of proposed research commons.