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Short abstract:

Commons enable, incentivize or require sharing and collaboration. We explore efforts to establish a data commons through an Australian stem cell registry. We explore the constructedness of resources, and the tensions in establishing collective goods around distinct but interrelated resources.

Long abstract:

Scientific research depends on sharing resources and communication and collaboration between a range of interested parties. Many of these interactions are informal, but there are also more formal arrangements and infrastructures to enable, incentivize or require sharing and collaboration in particular ways. Commons are one such arrangement, e.g., genomic commons (Contreras 2014), mouse commons (Bubela et al. 2017), biomedical commons (Bollinger et al. 2019). Key issues include the provision, governance, ownership, and access to commoned resources. Existing cases, and commons theory more generally, are useful for understanding other initiatives to establish collective goods in scientific research.

We explore efforts to establish a registry for the Australian stem cell research community. A registry is a centralized database containing information about the stem cell lines generated by researchers (but not the lines themselves) to foster transparency, visibility and efficiency in the use of these resources. Drawing on findings from a collaborative research project investigating ‘openness’ in stem cell research, we analyze a subset of insights from interviews with researchers about their experiences, attitudes and suggestions for establishing a stem cell registry, and how these compare to other options (e.g. banks, where cells would also be centrally maintained). Conceptually, our analysis builds on commons theories (Ostrom and Hess 2006) and focusses on two intertwined dynamics: 1) the contingent construction of resources, and the challenges in shifting resources from individual to collective goods, and 2) the tensions in establishing collective goods around two distinct, but interrelated, resources (i.e. stem cell lines, and associated data).