Open Source Drug Discovery: Finding a Niche (or Maybe Several)

Abstract

Despite their novelty and importance, open source methods have been largely been limited to software. However, scholars have long suggested that it would be logical to organize at least one other field - drug discovery - using open source principles. This paper reviews today's relatively tentative attempts to organize open source biology collaborations and argues that more ambitious projects are feasible. Five specific projects are proposed and analyzed in detail. The article concludes by examining the special legal problems of writing open source licenses in the patent-dominated field of biology.