Thinh Nguyen writes over at the Science Commons blog … “We’re happy to announce that we’re launching the public comment and discussion period for our new patent tools: the Research Non-Assertion Pledge and the Public Patent License. We invite you to join the discussion at our public wiki. There you can read about these tools,…

From the Science Commons blog … Commoners and digerati alike will come together tonight at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco for a vibrant discussion on the intersection of science and the Web. The event, “Making the Web Work for Science”, will be moderated by Tim O’Reilly, founder of O’Reilly Media, joined by panelists Stephen…

Over on the Science Commons blog, Thinh writes: The NIH Public Access Policy, which was due to expire this year, has now been made permanent by the 2009 Consolidated Appropriations Act, signed into law last week. Last year, Science Commons, SPARC, and ARL jointly released a White Paper authored by our board member Mike Carroll…

Today, Creative Commons, in collaboration with Nike and Best Buy, announces a new project – GreenXchange – exploring how the digital commons can help holders of patents collaborate for sustainability. GreenXchange will be hosted inside the Science Commons wing of CC. GreenXchange draws on the experience of Creative Commons in creating “some rights reserved” regimes…

Donna Wentworth writes over at the Science Commons blog … Big news:  Microsoft Research has unveiled new add-ins for some of the most popular Microsoft products to make them more useful for the scientific community — including tools for creating, sharing and preserving research in the formats used by scientific publishers and digital archives. The…