Publish or Protect?

Public Interest Considerations in the Management of Intellectual Property in Education, Training

and Research

Content of presentation

The presentation will set out the perspectives of an Australian Government education department on Intellectual Property protection and dissemination

It will begin by dealing with overall Government policy on commercialisation of publicly funded IP and will attempt to dispel some misconceptions about that policy

It will then set out an analysis of issues surrounding dissemination of research information and current impediments to cost effective access to scholarly

information It will conclude by looking at some implications of current

copyright approaches for effective use of on line technology for education

Why is the Department of Education Science and Training interested? Governments are the major funders of schools and

vocational education and training The Australian Government is the major funder of higher

education The Australian Government is the major funder of

research in universities and research agencies The results of that funding are, in many cases, the

production of intellectual property (from lesson plans to learned articles)

DEST therefore is interested to know how the management of IP generated through DEST funding can help or hinder its fundamental purpose of getting good education, training and research outcomes in Australia

Intellectual Property incentives

Creation of IP in the form of an idea

Protection and exploitation of the IP via licensing, patenting, spin off company or other means

Generation of profits from commercialisation

Payments to creator of IP, giving

an incentive to create more IP

Standard assumptions about commercialisation of research It is all about patents, licenses and spin offs The key is to tie up IP and protect it so that it can

form the basis of licence income or spin off company revenue

Dissemination of information about research outcomes in inimical to commercialisation

Government puts a higher priority on ‘commercialisation’ of research than dissemination of research results

This is looking at commercialisation as being largely about how originators of IP secure a share of any revenue generated

Actual commercialisation processes Network (diffusion) processes

Education Extension Publication, communication

Market (technology transfer) processes Transfer of knowledge as an intellectual property right (IPR) as a

result of ownership of the IP generated through conduct of research – a knowledge product

Sale of research services – project research, consultancy Sale of teaching services – professional development, industry

accredited courses Relationship (organisation) processes

Research institutes and centres supported by industry and government

How does value accrue?

In the vast majority of cases, value from education and research accrues through the effective dissemination of the results of research, leading to advancement of understanding and societal/industry uptake of results

The economic value flowing from research into the information technology has accrued largely via the transformational effects which IT has had on production processes and service delivery throughout the economy

Even where the issue is the extent to which universities themselves benefit financially from research, income from consultancies and research based teaching far exceeds revenue from ‘traditional’ commercialisation

Implications for policy

Even allowing for the complexity of dissemination mechanisms, it is axiomatic that information which is not accessible will not easily have a positive impact on anything

Government, therefore, has an interest in facilitating the effective dissemination of knowledge, both in the broad and the particular and in removing barriers to effective dissemination

The overall policy imperative flowing from an interest in maximising the economic impact of research is for Governments to facilitate effective dissemination of research and ensure wide take up in the economy and society more generally

It is all about balance

Government policy is not ‘commercialise everything’ We are interested in how IP can produce value for

Australian industry and society and appropriate commercialisation as part of that process

We do emphasise the need for focus and clarity good, efficient processes to identify what IP should be put

into commercialisation paths clear principles to base decisions on

Lack of clarity/lack of decisions can impede the delivery of value from the great majority of IP which ‘simply’ needs to be disseminated

Where is the money coming from?

The issues associated with managing IP to commercialise research have much in common with normal private sector commercial activities and interest in managing IP

There is Government money involved but the issue is how to maximise economic activity and financial returns all around ie it is about normal market issues

Would now like to turn to quite different situations where we are largely talking about closed money circles the issues are not so much market issues as cost effectiveness

of services

Access to scholarly publications

A major recent topic of debate is access to scholarly publications

The current commercial publishing arrangements are centuries old

They meet some of the cost of operating peer review mechanisms and all of the cost of ‘publication’ by way of after-the-event access charges rather than up front charges

Not surprisingly they function as an offshoot of normal commercial publishing arrangements

The publication process

Creation of IP in the form of a novel

Cost of publication met by publisher at no cost to author (may pay author an advance)

Public pays for access to IP by buying the book

Revenue generated pays publishers costs

Royalties paid to author (incentive to write another novel)

The serials process

Creation of IP in the form of an article

Cost of publication, including peer review met by publisher at no cost to author (or payment to reviewer)

Library pays for hard copy or database access

Higher education sector funds (Government, fees etc)

Revenue is retained by the publisherLittle or no distribution to author

Note that this is not a commercialisation or income generation process. It is a fee for service process

The oligopoly serials process

Creation of IP in the form of an article

Cost of publication, including peer review met by publisher at no cost to author (or payment to reviewer)

Article placed in database and access sold to database as a whole

Higher education sector funds (Government, fees etc)

Revenue is retained by the publisherLittle or no distribution to author

Library pays for database access

This could possibly be considered reverse commercialisation whereby the value of publicly funded IP becomes a private asset to be resold to Government

Government interest

Government is not interested in paying more than is appropriate for any particular service

At the same time we are conscious that the current arrangements have been in place for a long time and operate around the world

We understand that crucial elements of the system must be preserved particularly peer review and quality control in general

What is DEST doing? We are actively supporting both investigation of the

issues and the development of possible alternative approaches to scholarly publications

As an example of the first activity, we supported a forum on Changing Research Practices in the Digital Information and Communication Environment (http://www.humanities.org.au/NSCF/current.htm)

We are funding projects exploring the creation of institutional repositories for scholarly communications (http://www.arrow.edu.au and http://www.apsr.edu.au )

We are also interested in exploring possible changes to academic reward structures as part of development of Quality and Accessibility Frameworks for Australian research (http://backingaus.innovation.gov.au/2004/research/qual_pub_res.htm )

Copyright and on line learning

Key members of the education and training sector regard copyright as a major inhibiting factor in the use of on line services as an educational tool

The following slides suggest at least some of the reasons why this is so and offer at least one way in which

Governments can reduce the problem

How hard copy textbooks work

Creation of IP in the form of a textbook

Cost of publication met by publisher at no cost to author

School pays for access to IP by buying the textbook

Revenue generated pays publishers costs

Royalties paid to author (incentive to write another textbook)

Teacher takes a photocopy of part and distributes to class

Copying picked up in Copyright Agency Ltd Survey

CAL makes a payment to the author

Copyright of on line materials

In hard copy the principal distribution act is the first purchase

With on-line materials it is all about copying in order to use on line materials you have to

communicate them In the hard copy world copyright is largely the

problem of ‘other people’ On line, individual teachers can become

‘publishers’ without even realising it

Print vs On line

Buy once

Look at free

Create a transaction

record every time you look at an object

Consequences

Copyright uncertainty is already a major inhibitor to the creative use of on line learning It is simply impossible for a teacher to know how to

navigate the complexities of copyright law Cost uncertainty is a major concern for

administrators A model based on charging for amount of

‘copying’ is a recipe for open ended costs in an on line environment

Whose material is it anyway?

Most material used in on line teaching, including in universities, is produced by players within education and government or quasi government systems

It consists of public web site material (eg museum sites), learning objects developed by education systems and objects created by teaching staff

It is not clear that there is value in using the traditional payment model for this makes much sense

Learning objects

Creation of a learning object

Cost of creating object is met by the commissioning agency

Access to object provided free to members of a system

Access provided at a cost to those outside the system

Objects are copied

CAL collects revenue for copying and remits to the originating agency (less overhead)

DEST’s view

Australian education, training and research should be regarded as a system

In principle, material produced using DEST funds should be available without cost to education, science and training users

We would encourage other members of the education, training and research system to take a similar view for ‘bespoke’ materials

We consider that the creation of a large body of material which could be used for education, training and research purposes without ongoing use charges would be very desirable And that there need to be simplified procedures (standard

licenses) to facilitate this

What about commercial products?

In the end on line education will only succeed if there is a commercial incentive to produce products for sale into the education market

However potential suppliers may want to reflect what kind of model education buyers are likely to find attractive

Unknown costs and uncertain ability to use products may not be the best marketing approach

Thank you