The Digital Factory for Knowledge: Production and Validation of Scientific Results

By Renaud Fabre and Alain Bensoussan

This book explores how the technical upheavals of the 21st century have changed the structures and architecture of the creation, sharing and regulation of knowledge. From the new economic and technical models of production and dissemination of knowledge, the book deals with all new forms of valorisation. It also explains how the legislative deficit in the world and in Europe, around digital is being filled by new initiatives, such as the law for a Digital Republic, in France. It is therefore a book that provides a valuable follow-up to the book "The New Challenges of Knowledge", of which it constitutes the continuation and operational deepening.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wiley
• Release date: Mar 15, 2018
• ISBN: 9781119516576

Book preview

Table of Contents

Cover

Title

Copyright

Preface

Part 1: Scientific Resources and Data Economy

1 Data Production and Sharing: Towards a Universal Right?

1.1. The right to knowledge today: between attempts at universalization and self-regulation by the GAFA

1.2. Platform and scientific community rights: the absence of an upfront legal framework

1.3. The need to elaborate several types of legislation

1.4. Open Science: an achievable goal?

2 Data: a Simple Raw Material?

2.1. The new generation of data: management issues arising from ownership rights

2.2. How to transform these data into knowledge?

2.3. A new knowledge economy is necessary

2.4. International scientific publishing: high added-value services and researcher community

3 New Knowledge Tools

3.1. Sharing and uncertainty

3.2. Platform construction

3.3. Machine learning

3.4. Promising progress to be qualified…

Part 2: The Knowledge Factory

4 Economic Models of Knowledge Sharing

4.1. A quick historic overview

4.2. Property and/or sharing

4.3. An immaterial good capable of fueling the production of material goods

4.4. The large stakes of knowledge production

4.5. Development prospects allowing for new fields of study and more nimbly integrating researchers into the economic chain

5 From the Author to the Valorizer

5.1. The author and the valorizer: conciliation and efficiency of the interaction

5.2. One point on patents

5.3. The innovation cycle

5.4. The law for a Digital Republic

5.5. Scientific openness surpassing ancient legal tools

6 Valorization: a Global Geopolitical Stake

6.1. A multispeed competition

6.2. International cooperation in the scientific sector

7 Focus: the Chinese Patent Strategy

7.1. Chinese expansion

7.2. An inflation of Chinese patents

7.3. Some fallbacks in China nuancing its strategic position

7.4. Contestable and contested digital supremacy

8 Artificial Intelligence Policies

8.1. Policies concerning strong AI

8.2. Policies concerning weak AI

8.3. Policies concerning artificial intelligence safety

8.4. From practice to ethics: what is AI’s legal status?

9 New Formulations of Results and New Markets

9.1. Making universal: establishing common standards of expression

9.2. To adapt: from popularization to simplification

9.3. Developing the general state of knowledge with care

10 Open Science: a Common Good that Needs to be Valued?

10.1. A global challenge that must take the economy into account

10.2. A wide variety of public policies respond to this challenge

10.3. The French case and international rankings

10.4. The limits of the patent system and publication count

10.5. Investment tools aiming to correct these failures

10.6. How to measure innovation?

10.7. The application of research is not an end in itself

Conclusion

Appendices

Appendix 1: Extract from the CNRS White Paper: The Work of Science and the Digital Field: Data, Publications, Platforms. A Systematic Analysis of the Law for a Digital Republic . 111

A1.1. Preamble

A1.2. Summary

A1.3. Introduction

A1.4. Identification of pivotal concepts

A1.5. Platform

A1.6. Scientific writings

A1.7. Research data

A1.8. The concept of research data prior to the law for a Digital Republic: a concept from practice

Appendix 2: Extract from the CNRS White Paper Open Science in a Digital Republic: Studies and Proposals for Law Application. Strategic Application Guide 161

A2.1. Preface

A2.2. Introduction: sharing and freedom of analysis of scientific texts and data

Bibliography

List of Authors

Index

End User License Agreement

List of Illustrations

1 Data Production and Sharing: Towards a Universal Right?

Figure 1.1. Legal architecture of knowledge: a typology of the levels of defining rights [MAU 15]

Figure 1.2. Survey at research units: the perception of the legal risks in connection with data. For a color version of this figure, see www.iste.co.uk/fabre/factory.zip

Figure 1.3. Open license logo and Open Source logo

Figure 1.4. Different combinations and logos corresponding to the types of Creative Commons licenses

4 Economic Models of Knowledge Sharing

Figure 4.1. Knowledge production and its specific forms: sharing, collaborative, and social and solidary economy

Figure 4.2. Immaterial goods and material goods

5 From the Author to the Valorizer

Figure 5.1. Forms of valorization and valorization strategies

Figure 5.2. Valorization of innovations in the law for a Digital Republic

Figure 5.3. The platform, meeting place of authors and users

6 Valorization: a Global Geopolitical Stake

Figure 6.1. Relative decline in civil research expenses in the United States

Figure 6.2. Research expenses vis-à-vis GDP: international comparisons

Figure 6.3. Tendential increase in Chinese public research expenses

Figure 6.4. Annual scientific production compared by volume (number of articles)

7 Focus: the Chinese Patent Strategy

Figure 7.1. Comparative growth of the number of patents

Figure 7.2. Comparative growth of the number of patents in China, organized by large fields of patent filings

Figure 7.3. China and the international competition in patent filing. For a color version of this figure, see www.iste.co.uk/fabre/factory.zip

Figure 7.4. China’s position in the digital industry

Figure 7.5. Number of patents verified and accepted from the number of patents filed: elements of comparison

9 New Formulations of Results and New Markets

Figure 9.1. Extensibility and scaling up of an innovation

Figure 9.2. Principles for formulating innovation architectures

Figure 9.3. Interoperability: actors and projects. For a color version of this figure, see www.iste.co.uk/fabre/factory.zip

Figure 9.4. Some examples of the many computer code languages

Figure 9.5. The difference in relation to time

Figure 9.6. Transaction economics and competition between the markets of scientific innovation

10 Open Science: a Common Good that Needs to be Valued?

Figure 10.1. An attempt to classify research expenditures by categories. For a color version of this figure, see www.iste.co.uk/fabre/factory.zip

The Digital Factory for Knowledge

Production and Validation of Scientific Results

Edited by

Renaud Fabre

Alain Bensoussan

in collaboration with

Lucile Collin

Marie Blanquart

Louki-Géronimo Richou

Wiley Logo

First published 2018 in Great Britain and the United States by ISTE Ltd and John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms and licenses issued by the CLA. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside these terms should be sent to the publishers at the undermentioned address:

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© ISTE Ltd 2018

The rights of Renaud Fabre, Alain Bensoussan, Lucile Collin, Marie Blanquart and Louki-Géronimo Richou to be identified as the authors of this work have been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

© Copyright CNRS/DIST for pages 111 to 177

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018930648

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978-1-78630-241-0

Preface

The tidal wave of digital and new technologies has not spared the field of scientific research. The digital sector, an engine of innovation which facilitates progress and the exchange of results, is also the source of new social, economic and legal stakes. By coordinating the work of their students, Renaud Fabre, Director of Scientific and Technical Information at CNRS (French National Center for Scientific Research), and Alain Bensoussan, a lawyer at the Paris Appeal Court and an internationally renowned expert in the digital sector, have once again taken it upon themselves, with their students at Sciences Po, Paris, to present, analyze and grasp these different stakes that French research must face to maintain its standing in the digital era.

In a world where the economy is shifting towards the development of services and the production of data is spreading, two phenomena, both opposing and complementary, stem from the manufacturing of knowledge by scientific researchers: the Open Science movement and the need to reach the highest value for the results of scientific research.

Open Science upheaves the current economic models for sharing knowledge. This movement aims for the total, free sharing of scientific knowledge. Understood as a tool for scientific communities, accessible on digital platforms through performing research tools, data or scientific information is the object of various uses, exchanges, manipulations and treatments that overturn traditional notions of material and intellectual property rights. Some aspects relative to public research have been dealt with in France by the recent law for a Digital Republic, but numerous other issues persist: how do we ensure the quality of more and more abundant scientific articles? What are the methods for applying the law defined in favor of Text and Data Mining? Is science a common good or a resource with interest to be appropriated? What is the place of editors in the value chain and the scientific economy? Today, none of these questions can be given simple and categorical answers: every solution is in transition and, together, they create a future full of transformations.

Moreover, the valorization of scientific research has the central theme of granting an economic aspect to a research result. Currently, a large part of research projects are chosen according to the possible reuse of the technical innovation or the scientific advance that results from it in the industry or by a service company, the interest being to receive companies’ financial support. Research valorization largely passes as intellectual property, the textbook example being the patent. Yet, the patent suggests a monopoly and secrecy, the two aspects being theoretically opposed to the Open Science movement.

Can scientific progress only be brought about through economic considerations, to the detriment of public well-being, or vice versa? The geopolitical stakes are numerous, and international competition is intensifying with the entry of new actors, particularly China. What place should be given to the emergence of collaboration between States across Europe and also internationally?

The archetype of technical innovation bringing all of these issues together is artificial intelligence (AI). It currently does not lie within the framework of any legal norm. How should the contours of AI be defined? What should responsibility depend upon? AI raises social questions: does the undeniable economic potential of robots and their ability to improve the quality of humans’ lives justify the disappearance of jobs and the moral issues linked to creating a purely logical being supposedly superior or equal to man?

This book obviously does not allow us to clarify the tensions stemming from the digital sector and actualized in research between its quality as an economic tool and as a common good meant to serve us all. This book aims to address these different aspects and show that they are not necessarily incompatible.

Renaud FABRE

Alain BENSOUSSAN

January 2018

PART 1

Scientific Resources and Data Economy

1

Data Production and Sharing: Towards a Universal Right?

In 1968, Steward Brand, a biologist associated with the American counterculture, imagined the Whole Earth Catalogue. This tool, which took the form of a travel book, aimed to share knowledge between the hippie communities that read it and left behind it the hope for a universal spread of knowledge. Very quickly, starting in 1985, Brand launched an electronic version of the Whole Earth Catalogue, the Whole Earth ‘Lectronic Link. This first bulletin board system, which then worked like a forum, brought the idea of the universal spread of knowledge to a whole new level. In fact, the dematerialization of the Whole Earth Catalogue allowed the territorial constraint of the previous experiment to be bypassed. In this, we can see very well that, despite the representation of a military development of the Internet, it continues to be influenced by the American counterculture [TUR 06] and, in essence, contains universalist values.

However, regardless of these universalist values that have fed the development of the Internet, the reality shows greater contrast today. The Web, founded on the principles of freedom and open sharing of resources, has in part taken on the aspects of classical liberalism, an economic line of thought that has largely supplanted the original ideals. Thus, if the Internet remains a place for the spread of knowledge, this knowledge is primarily lucrative and is undergoing privatization. Oligopolies are being formed by the concentration of scientific publishing houses, and platforms like Google Scholar dominate the market. This is why the regulations on knowledge are rudimentary; we are far from any perspective recognizing a universal right to access knowledge.

We have thus decided to consider this right to knowledge and its evolutions with a prospective approach: are we moving towards a universal right?

1.1. The right to knowledge today: between attempts at universalization and self-regulation by the GAFA

The Internet, through its deterritorialization, requires new regulations. In fact, the first obstacle to the implementation of a universal right of the Web is that the Internet, by its very nature, questions the principle of the territoriality of rights. The essence of rights as a regulation is founded on the idea that it is exercised in a given space, dominated by a sovereign power responsible for enforcing it. It is thus clear that the emergence of the Internet poses a certain number of questions concerning its regulation due to its global character.

In fact, the favored path to regulating the Internet remains the national path. Thus, with the Marco Civil da Internet [MAR 14] supported by Dilma Rousseff, Brazil proposed an innovative model concerning the recognition of Internet rights. We can also cite the digital law supported by the French Secretary of State Axelle Lemaire. In particular, Article 30 states that the copyright period should be reduced for public research, thereby allowing free access to the results of fundamental research. Unfortunately, we can also cite numerous examples where States failed to enforce intellectual property rights and to prevent the emergence of platforms offering protected content free of charge. In fact, servers need only be hosted in a lenient State for platforms to be kept online.

Ambitious attempts at multilateral regulation have failed on this point, which has led to the implementation of imbalanced regulation. For example, despite the creation of the IGF, a forum for Internet governance, it has not played the central, normative role that would have led to the emergence of a