Reply: The complexity of commons

Constructing Commons in the Cultural Environment, and responses to that article by Professors Thráinn Eggertsson, Wendy Gordon, Gregg Macey, Robert Merges, Elinor Ostrom, and Lawrence Solum. This short Reply comments briefly on each of those responses

The smart grid as commons: exploring alternatives to infrastructure financialisation

This paper explores a tension between financialisation of electricity infrastructures and efforts to bring critical urban systems into common ownership. Focusing on the emerging landscape of electricity regulation and e-mobility in the United Kingdom (UK), it examines how electricity grid ownership has become financialised, and why the economic assumptions that enabled this financialisation are being called into question. New technologies, such as smart electricity meters and electric vehicles, provide cities with new tools to tackle poor air quality and greenhouse gas emissions. Electricity grids are key enabling infrastructures but the companies that run them do not get rewarded for improving air quality or tackling climate change. UK government regulation of electricity grids both enables financialisation and forecloses opportunities to manage the infrastructure for wider environmental and public benefit. Nonetheless, the addition of smart devices to this network - the ‘smart grid’ – opens up an opportunity for common ownership of the infrastructure. Transforming the smart grid into commons necessitates deep structural reform to the entire architecture of infrastructure regulation in the UK

Digital orphans: Data closure and openness in patient- powered networks

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Palgrave Macmillan via the DOI in this record.In this paper, we discuss an issue linked to data-sharing regimes in patient-powered, social-media-based networks, namely that most of the data that patient users share are not used to research scientific issues or the patient voice. This is not a trivial issue, as participation in these networks is linked to openness in data sharing, which would benefits fellow patients and contributes to the public good more generally. Patient-powered research networks are often framed as disrupting research agendas and the industry. However, when data that patients share are not accessible for research, their epistemic potential is denied. The problem is linked to the business models of the organisations managing these networks: models centred on controlling patient data tend to close networks with regard to data use. The constraint on research is at odds with the ideals of a sharing, open and supportive epistemic community that networks’ own narratives evoke. This kind of failure can create peculiar scenarios, such as the emergence of the ‘digital orphans’ of Internet research. By pointing out the issue of data use, this paper informs the discussion about the capacity of patient-powered networks to support research participation and the patient voice.We are indebted to the anonymous reviewers and the editor, who with their supportive and constructive comments helped us to better clarify and highlight the argument of the article. We would like to also thank friends and colleagues who have offered valuable comments and suggestions on early drafts of this paper. We would like to especially thank Barbara Prainsack, Sabina Leonelli, Alena Buyx, and David Teira. This research is funded by the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007–2013)/ERC grant agreement number 335925, and the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (grant number 01GP1311