Having successfully advanced discussions toward treaties on the protection of folklore and traditional knowledge, country experts this week are meeting at the World Intellectual Property Organization to discuss the protection of genetic resources. But this time, it might prove trickier.

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The UNCCD Conference of the Parties (COP) during its ninth session in Buenos Aires in September 2009 decided (Decision 17/COP9) to provisionally accept a set of eleven impact indicators to measure progress on strategic objective 1, 2 and 3 of The Strategy.

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Intellectual property rights and access to medicines were on the agenda at the first day of a biotechnology industry group’s annual convention yesterday. The group held a panel on IP rights and also released a policy statement on access to medicine in developing countries. The director of the US Patent and Trademark Office commented positively on the initiative. The Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO)’s annual convention  is taking place in Chicago from 3-6 June. BIO is an industry advocacy group claiming some 1,200 members worldwide.

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The Google Book Settlement is probably the copyright story of the year — it’s complex, contentious, involves big players and big subjects — the future of books, perhaps good and evil — resulting in a vast amount of advocacy, punditry and academic analysis.

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Why would university faculty choose to place their scholarship on electronic archives for a world-wide audience? Many US universities have adopted such mandates for public access to faculty research, perhaps most notably Harvard [1], MIT, and the University of Kansas [2]. These policies (and many more like them in various stages of consideration on campuses across the nation and world) are harbingers of a new order, one in which essentially all scholarly articles can be found and accessed by any interested individual.

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In order to stimulate the process of sharing dataset-level metadata, the GBIF Secretariat is offering a limited number of small grants of up to € 5,000 to GBIF Participants to enable them to build and/or connect their existing metadata catalogues to the GBIF network.

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In order to help achieve targets and address specific issues and/or objectives as outlined in the GBIF Work Programme 2009-2010, GBIF may commission time-bound and subject-specific Task Groups. The GBIF Secretariat invites proposals from organisations/institutions, research groups and individuals working in the area of biodiversity informatics, bioinformatics, ecoinformatics and/or related fields of scientific data management to coordinate the commissioning and activities of these Task Groups.

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Researchers frequently ask how they can be involved in the development process of the LifeWatch research infrastructure. Indeed, the European scientific and technical community has much to offer. Although LifeWatch cannot provide direct funding, many countries are involved in its preparatory phase. It may therefore may be of some advantage to your project if it is seen to be supporting the development of LifeWatch. It is now possible to request a label as LifeWatch Supporting project for projects which clearly contribute to the LifeWatch infrastructure development. The affiliated project has the right to use the LifeWatch logo in all project communications and is valid for the agreed project duration. LifeWatch lists the affiliation on this website.

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the online registration for DC-2009, the ninth International Conference on Dublin Core and Metadata Applications, to be held in Seoul, Korea, 12-16 October 2009, is now open. Early bird registration is open until 31 August. Also, the preliminary program is published with the main elements of the program for the event. A further version of the program with additional details is scheduled to be published in early August.

DC-2009 will focus on linked data and the enabling of the Semantic Web. Conference participants will explore the conceptual and practical issues in breaking the constraints of data silos and connecting pieces of data, information, and knowledge. Metadata is a key to these processes supporting publishing and interlinking structured data on the Semantic Web.

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Google has launched a new online tool enabling free data-sharing that could aid with international scientific research collaborations.  The tool, Fusion Tables — launched on the Google Labs website — allows tables of data to be visualised as charts, graphs and maps, which can help identify patterns and trends. Users are able upload their data and make the information freely available to anyone, opening up possibilities for collaboration.

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