Opening up science - Financial Express

"New Jersey-based health care giant Johnson & Johnson took a leadership position in open science on Friday, leaving behind competitors who are reluctant to outgrow the current way of doing science and technology, which believes that the highest value accrues from exclusive ownership of knowledge, protected by a punitive patents regime, strong data security laws and a climate of corporate secrecy. This model cannot possibly scale up to the ever-larger questions and opportunities that science and technology will encounter soon. Sharing across national borders and corporate and academic firewalls would be an easier and faster route to take. J&J has forged an alliance with the Yale Open Data Access (YODA) Project of the Center for Outcomes Research and Evaluation (CORE) at Yale-New Haven Hospital to release clinical trials data to other researchers. Traditionally, pharmaceutical companies have closely held trials data, only sharing with regulators as required. Negative results were especially unlikely to be released. It has been feared that the data can be used by the competition to save development time, or to launch political attacks on the company. Not all criticism of companies in the life sciences is in the public interest, and they are naturally not eager to shovel grist into the mill ..."