Open science, research and transfer

Open science democratizes who can sit at the table of knowledge. An article indexed behind a paywall, a database with access limited to subscribers, or a patent without clear conditions of access end up filtering who does research and who simply receives the results. When data, publications, and methodologies circulate under transparent rules, a researcher from another continent, an undergraduate student, a local community, or an entrepreneur who has never set foot in a laboratory can build upon and contribute to what others have already advanced, instead of starting from scratch. That is the real promise of openness: not the absence of rules, but rules that expand who participates in science and who benefits from it. That is why it is worth designing them well. Chile has spent months with science in the news spotlight. In June, Congress passed the Technology and Knowledge Transfer Law (Bill 16.686-19), which creates a framework for publicly funded research to reach the market and society, giving rise to a National Repository of Scientific and Technological Knowledge and Information administered by ANID. In that context, the paradigm of democratizing access to knowledge that Open Science proposes and promotes globally—making scientific research, data, and their results accessible, transparent, and reusable for all of society—becomes even more relevant, as it prevents paywalls or ambiguous licenses from filtering who does research and who merely consumes results. The question then arises: does the protection of intangible assets compete with the democratization of knowledge? Intellectual property is not the antithesis of open science, but the normative tool that makes it viable and strategically regulates it. Far from fading away within that paradigm, intellectual property becomes more precise and necessary than ever: it provides the rules of the game so that researchers, industry, and society can share value transparently and sustainably. Study reveals serious problems for some local startups expanding abroad This tension is documented. In a recent report on open science and intellectual property, the European Commission acknowledges that academic literature rarely addresses both topics together, with the idea persisting that stronger intellectual property competes with, rather than coexists with, the openness of knowledge. The pandemic made this evident: concern that patents would limit access to vaccines put intellectual property under public suspicion like never before. However, the same study offers an idea that reorders those certainties. If the intellectual property framework is designed correctly from the outset, it becomes an essential tool for regulating open science, not an obstacle to it. They are not antagonists. When well designed, they are part of the same mechanism. Three pieces of evidence confirm this. The patent system is the first argument in that direction. Millions of documents are available free of charge in open-access databases just eighteen months after filing, and most historical patents have already expired—that is, those technologies are now in the public domain. The system requires disclosure in exchange for temporary protection: intellectual property, properly understood, has always had openness built in. Free software provides a second argument. Its communities deliberately use copyright to force the openness of their creations: they license, they do not renounce. It is intellectual property management with a different purpose. Scientific data offer a third argument. A recent study on biodiversity and scientific data confirms something observed every day. Much research data—such as measurements, observations, or sensor records—is not even protected by copyright, because it consists of facts and results, not creative works. What can be protected is the database that organizes them, under a different and more limited right. Confusing these two layers leads to frequent mistakes: licensing data that no one could claim as their own, or leaving a database that does require it unlicensed. That is where expert insight into intellectual property ceases to be an obstacle and becomes indispensable for opening up with sound judgment. To stop seeing "open" and "protected" as opposite poles, and to see them as points of the same strategic decision, is the principle that increasingly guides open science policies today: as open as possible, as closed as necessary. It is not an ambiguous formula; it requires justifying every closure, rather than justifying every opening. Promoting an open science policy implies that there is no longer distrust from whoever cedes ground, but rather the conviction of someone who designs clear rules so that researchers, industry, and society share value without losing the possibility of protecting it when appropriate. Intellectual property does not disappear in open science: it becomes more precise, more conscious, and, one could say, more necessary than ever. *Director of Development and Transfer, Universidad de Las Américas