Cover Page

The Digital Factory for Knowledge

Production and Validation of Scientific Results

Edited by

Renaud Fabre

Alain Bensoussan

in collaboration with

Lucile Collin

Marie Blanquart

Louki-Géronimo Richou

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Preface

The tidal wave of digital and new technologies has not spared the field of scientific research. The digital sector, an engine of innovation which facilitates progress and the exchange of results, is also the source of new social, economic and legal stakes. By coordinating the work of their students, Renaud Fabre, Director of Scientific and Technical Information at CNRS (French National Center for Scientific Research), and Alain Bensoussan, a lawyer at the Paris Appeal Court and an internationally renowned expert in the digital sector, have once again taken it upon themselves, with their students at Sciences Po, Paris, to present, analyze and grasp these different stakes that French research must face to maintain its standing in the digital era.

In a world where the economy is shifting towards the development of services and the production of data is spreading, two phenomena, both opposing and complementary, stem from the manufacturing of knowledge by scientific researchers: the Open Science movement and the need to reach the highest value for the results of scientific research.

Open Science upheaves the current economic models for sharing knowledge. This movement aims for the total, free sharing of scientific knowledge. Understood as a tool for scientific communities, accessible on digital platforms through performing research tools, data or scientific information is the object of various uses, exchanges, manipulations and treatments that overturn traditional notions of material and intellectual property rights. Some aspects relative to public research have been dealt with in France by the recent law for a Digital Republic, but numerous other issues persist: how do we ensure the quality of more and more abundant scientific articles? What are the methods for applying the law defined in favor of Text and Data Mining? Is science a common good or a resource with interest to be appropriated? What is the place of editors in the value chain and the scientific economy? Today, none of these questions can be given simple and categorical answers: every solution is in transition and, together, they create a future full of transformations.

Moreover, the valorization of scientific research has the central theme of granting an economic aspect to a research result. Currently, a large part of research projects are chosen according to the possible reuse of the technical innovation or the scientific advance that results from it in the industry or by a service company, the interest being to receive companies’ financial support. Research valorization largely passes as intellectual property, the textbook example being the patent. Yet, the patent suggests a monopoly and secrecy, the two aspects being theoretically opposed to the Open Science movement.

Can scientific progress only be brought about through economic considerations, to the detriment of public well-being, or vice versa? The geopolitical stakes are numerous, and international competition is intensifying with the entry of new actors, particularly China. What place should be given to the emergence of collaboration between States across Europe and also internationally?

The archetype of technical innovation bringing all of these issues together is artificial intelligence (AI). It currently does not lie within the framework of any legal norm. How should the contours of AI be defined? What should responsibility depend upon? AI raises social questions: does the undeniable economic potential of robots and their ability to improve the quality of humans’ lives justify the disappearance of jobs and the moral issues linked to creating a purely logical being supposedly superior or equal to man?

This book obviously does not allow us to clarify the tensions stemming from the digital sector and actualized in research between its quality as an economic tool and as a common good meant to serve us all. This book aims to address these different aspects and show that they are not necessarily incompatible.

Renaud FABRE

Alain BENSOUSSAN

January 2018

PART 1
Scientific Resources and Data Economy