Regulating Data Travel in the Life Sciences: The Impact of Commodification

The travel of small facts (such as data) across geographicallocations and disciplines is increasingly regulated by the private andpublic sponsors of digital databases. My analysis focuses on thecontrast between the strategies supported by the public and privatesectors in governing bioinformatic strategies of data exchange. Upto now, private sponsors have encouraged product-drivencompetition among database curators and users, which results inthe creation of databases whose use and survival is bound to thespecific projects in which they are employed. Public sponsors havetended instead to favour resource-driven competition, wheredatabases are seen as resources for all biologists in the long term,irrespectively of the specific context of use. By focusing on thisdifference and its consequences for the advancement of biomedicalresearch, I show how the ongoing commodification of the lifesciences affects the ways in which small facts travel acrossresearch contexts. I conclude that the values and methodologicalcriteria currently endorsed by privately sponsored research have adisruptive impact on the ability of researchers to build on eachother’s work, an issue that is increasingly recognised both bygovernmental agencies and by the corporations involved in dataproduction.[...]