The Historical Origins and Economic Logic of 'Open Science'

Modern "big science" projects, such as the LHC experiments in physics that are being prepared to run at CERN, embody the distinctive ethos of cooperation and mechanisms of coordination among distributed groups of researchers that are characteristic of 'open science'. Much has been written about the institutions of open science, their supporting social norms, and their effectiveness in generating additions to the stock of reliable knowledge. But from where have these institutions and their supporting ethos come? How robust can we assume them to be in the face of the recent trends for universities and research institutes in some domains of science to seek to appropriate the benefits of new discoveries and inventions by asserting intellectual property claims? A search for the historical origins of the institutions of open science throws some new light on these issues, and the answers may offer some lessons for contemporary science and technology policy-making