 Today we've got Matthew Todd from the University of Sydney, School of Chemistry. We also have Baden Applyard, the National Programme Director for Osgoal, talking about open access and licensing, how it's impacted. It has on science and the way we do science. Matthew, you, as far as I can see, have a whole new way of approaching science that includes open data, but lots more. What are you up to there in the School of Chemistry? Well, you know, I think of it as the way that maybe science used to be done. By the time the school is sharing things over port, is that? I think if we want to work quickly and efficiently and make best use of resources, sharing our data is very important. Sharing our papers, obviously. Open access is very important. Open data is very important. The thing we're doing here is trying to show that we can work in a more open source manner, in which we share data and ideas and we don't protect our work with patents. So this is just the reproducibility of the experiment afterwards, but the whole experiment kind of happens in the open, is that right? Yeah, that's right. Yeah, and that means that you share everything you're doing and and the advantage there of course is that anybody can then join your project and give you help and advice. So experts can identify themselves and come to your project. So is this happening with any of your research at the moment? Yeah, we just published a project on making a drug for a neglected tropical disease in a quick way using an open approach and we had a lot of input from industry, perhaps counter-intuitively, who were able to demonstrate that they could help in a public domain. And at the moment we're running an open-source drug discovery project for malaria, where we're trying to find new molecules in a kind of patent-less arena where anybody can contribute. So this is like social networking meets science in a big way, where we're always warned about the downsides of having everything out in the open from a we warn our kids, watch out what you do on Facebook, we'll be around and could be seen by anyone. This is taking that whole thing and turning on its head and saying yes, there are some things, you know, let's say don't put your schoolies photos on the web for everyone to see, but there are some things like science that actually benefit from having lots of eyeballs on them. Yeah indeed, I mean the social networking thing is important but crucial to the project is that you're able to share the detail, the scientific detail. So the data and your lab notebook and everything. That means that peer review of your work never stops. So your lab notebook is available to the world. If you make a mistake or you do your science badly, someone will pick you up on that. So it's a pretty brutal way of doing it and your work has to be first rate, otherwise someone's going to criticize. But does that mean that you get less acknowledgement for the work that you're doing and how does that work? Oh I don't know. I think it works in a way that software works, open source software. So people know who are driving projects and people know who are the most active and who've input the most. I think you develop that sense as a community. Certainly anyone who contributes something significant will be eligible to be named on resulting publications and in the normal way that happens in science. There's no problem with publishing work that has appeared in the public domain already. Based on merit and real contribution. Yeah indeed, contributions which are trackable and demonstrable, yes. There's a social element to this. It sounds like a not just a new sort of methodology for science but a different sort of social approach to it. Sure, I mean it's interesting to sort of discuss your ideas in the open. Particularly in something like drug discovery where it's useful to talk about the fact that you're not quite sure what to do next and what the next best step is. People generally want to help solve problems and to do good. So we get advice from people who want to help out and make the science happen. The social part is absolutely crucial, yeah. We've got great advice and inputs from people we don't know. So we don't have to rely on our known colleagues and our known network of scientists. We get inputs from people we don't know and I think that's a very important advantage of going open. So for example, for those things around malaria and the other tropical disease things that you are working on, what's the difference then between this approach and the others? What's the difference that you're seeing? You mean the difference in the way of working? Yeah, well in the result. I mean, is it easier, faster? What's the difference? Lots of people working on a big project in a kind of distributed way. What's the result? I think there are two things. The one is yes, it goes quickly. So you see an acceleration of what you're doing because inevitably you get good advice from people about where the project should be going and you get inputs. You know, people making molecules and you're doing experiments. So it accelerates things. It's also important that the second thing is that you have oversight. So anybody who is well versed in a field or has a great deal of experience can come along and say, well, actually, I think that you're not doing this quite right or did you consider this more up-to-date approach that you might not have heard of? That kind of oversight mimics a lot of things that are done in pharmaceuticals, for example, where companies have expert scientific advisory boards who come along and criticize and critique projects. Essentially, our project is continually going through that process where you have people with a great deal of experience guiding what you are doing in the future. Okay, Baden, what do you think from a point of view of the flow of information and terms of use of the inputs to these kind of projects? What's what this new approach to open science, what does that mean for the way we approach, you know, the framework for accessing information? Well, I think it means that we really have to ensure that we have the front of our mind before we enter into these projects. An idea as to how we want to receive the information from a licensing perspective so that we can achieve the ultimate goals at the end of the day of making the results open as well. Preferably, it would be great to receive all of this information under either one or a few licenses that contain comparable or compatible conditions and terms because that enables the broadest possible reuse of the material. So on that basis, I see the linkage between Matt's project and something like Osgold is settling and refining a base set of licenses or single licenses under which everyone can operate. Yes, because it's open and the idea is to integrate stuff from all over the place. You really want to have the least amount of friction, you know, both from a scientific point of view, social point of view, but from a legal point of view as well, about the clarity of what I can do with all of this. Well, the beautiful part about what Matt's doing is the speed with which people are responding and working. And if you don't have fairly streamlined, open arrangements with regard to licensing, then what typically would happen is significant delay as lawyers begin negotiating fairly unique and restrictive terms, times 10 or times 100. However, many people are involved or organisations are involved. Significant delay and increased costs are occasioned by those frictions that you pointed out. Alright, fascinating subject. If you want to hear more on this, we have a full seminar that was given by Matt, and I encourage you to go and have a look at that, that the full presentation, which has some absolutely marvellous insights into tropical diseases and how we can address them. Thanks for that, Matt. Thanks, Baden. My pleasure. Pleasure. And we'll see you soon.