This book collects fifteen new case studies documenting successful knowledge and information sharing commons institutions for medical and health sciences innovation. Also available as Open Access.

"Knowledge commons" describes the institutionalized community governance of the sharing and, in some cases, creation, of information, science, knowledge, data, and other types of intellectual and cultural resources. It is the subject of enormous recent interest and enthusiasm with respect to policymaking about innovation, creative production, and intellectual property. Taking that enthusiasm as its starting point, Governing Knowledge Commons argues that policymaking should be based on evidence and a deeper understanding of what makes commons institutions work. It offers a systematic way to study knowledge commons, borrowing and building on Elinor Ostrom's Nobel Prize-winning research on natural resource commons. It proposes a framework for studying knowledge commons that is adapted to the unique attributes of knowledge and information, describing the framework in detail and explaining how to put it into context both with respect to commons research and with respect to innovation and information policy. Eleven detailed case studies apply and discuss the framework exploring knowledge commons across a wide variety of scientific and cultural domains.

Looking at knowledge as a shared resource: experts discuss how to define, protect,and build the knowledge commons in the digital age.

Volume compiles studies of the production and reproduction of market-supporting social infrastructures through the prism of knowledge commons.

Explores the complex relationships between privacy, governance, and the production and sharing of knowledge. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

The struggle to protect the so-called Knowledge Commons against the current regime of IP enclosures is gathering momentum. Referencing the shared popular ownership of common lands in the pre-capitalist era, today's knowledge commoners want to build a resource, a life source, of intellectual wealth to sustain people living under informatic capitalism.

Tackles one of the most enduring and contentious issues of positive political economy: common pool resource management.