A call for papers has been issued for a conference on "Governing Pooled Knowledge Resources: Building Institutions for Sustainable Scientific, Cultural and Genetic Resource Commons".

There will be six tracks for abstract submissions:

• Track 1 on “Scientific Research and Innovation Commons”
• Track 2 on “Digital Information Commons”
• Track 3 on “Historical experience of the knowledge commons”
• Track 4 on “Genetic Resource Commons”
• Track 5 on “Cultural Commons”
• Cross-cutting conference track 6 on climate change

The 1st Global Thematic IASC Conference on the Knowledge Commons aims to bring together leading people from a number of international scientific research communities, social science researchers, practitioners and policy analysts, to discuss the rationale and practical feasibility of institutional arrangements designed to emulate key public domain conditions for collaborative research. A variety of initiatives and policies have been proposed that are going beyond “open access”, and aim to facilitate more effective and extensive (global) sharing on local and global pools of not only scientific information and data but also genetic resources and cultural expressions. 

For full paper presentations, the paper has to be submitted no later than 1 August, 2012.