Fingers Crossed, But We're Not Holding Our Breath

Derek Lowe has a post at In the Pipeline about Merck's new venture in open access. Sage, which will be headed up by Stephen Friend, is meant to "bring together genomic studies from all sorts of laboratories into a common format and database," Lowe writes. He says that challenges with IP and with varying data formats will be a major hurdle for the project -- and is none too sure the venture will "[get] off the ground at all. ... The analogy with open-source software doesn’t hold up so well with most scientific research these days, since the entry barriers (facilities, equipment, and money) are significantly higher than they are in coding."