At its meeting last week, the Management Committee of the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) adopted a proposal for the institute to use an ‘open’ license for its published outputs.
The aim is to encourage maximum uptake and re-use of ILRI’s research. Under this proposal, ILRI retains copyright over each output. It also explicitly encourages wide non-commercial re-use of each output, subject to full attribution of ILRI and the author(s), and use of an equally open license for any derivative output.
By default, this license applies to the following categories of outputs:
- ILRI published reports and publications (print and digital)
- ILRI photographs
- ILRI powerpoints
- ILRI posters
- ILRI video and films
This [Web site or output] is copyrighted by the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI). It is licensed for use under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License. To view this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/. Unless otherwise noted, you are free to copy, duplicate, or reproduce, and distribute, display, or transmit any part of this website or portions thereof without permission, and to make translations, adaptations, or other derivative works under the following conditions:
ATTRIBUTION. The work must be attributed, but not in any way that suggests endorsement by ILRI or the author(s).
NON-COMMERCIAL. This work may not be used for commercial purposes.
SHARE ALIKE. If this work is altered, transformed, or built upon, the resulting work must be distributed only under the same or similar license to this one.
NOTICE:
- For any reuse or distribution, the license terms of this work must be made clear to others.
- Any of the above conditions can be waived if permission is obtained from the copyright holder.
- Nothing in this license impairs or restricts the author’s moral rights.
- Fair dealing and other rights are in no way affected by the above.
This policy is part of ILRI’s commitment to make its research available, accessible and applicable to as many people as possible. More on the Triple-A approach in the CGIAR and on the Coherence in Information for Agricultural Research for Development (CIARD) initiative. We acknowledge prior work by the International Rice Research Institute.
Maarifa - Communications and Knowledge Management 
This is an excellent initiative, especially when we have policy makers in institutions being faced with decisions on IPR and copyright, and not always receiving the best of advice to balance on the tight rope of ‘Global Public Goods’ and ‘Patenting’ etc. This initiative will enable us to follow the (documented) experiences of ILRI and learn lessons from it (also licenced under creative commons)- but more importantly to add substance to the debate mentioned above. I look forward to some more ‘stories’ or evaluations of this process to keep the community informed.
My personal opinion on the above debate is that the easy solution for a policy maker is to use terms like ‘confidentiality’, ‘ensuring preservation of intellectual rights’, ‘proper exploitation of patenting rights’ etc. to adopt the safest position possible: keep the information ‘secured’. However, in a world where credibility and recognition is obtained more by ‘the knowledge you share with the community’ rather than ‘the information (knowledge?) you hold (hoard?)’, ILRI’s decision is a bold and very welcomed one, in the spirit of the adoption of the CIARD AAA and the GCARD consultations!