The incentives to share and collaborate

Francis Heylighen, Why is Open Access Development so Successful? Stigmergic organization and the economics of information, an ECCO Working Paper 2006-06 forthcoming in B. Lutterbeck, M. Baerwolff, and R. A. Gehring (eds.), Open Source Jahrbuch 2007, Lehmanns Media, 2007.  Self-archived December 14, 2006.  (Thanks to vsevcosmos.)

Abstract:   The explosive development of "free" or "open source" information goods contravenes the conventional wisdom that markets and commercial organizations are necessary to efficiently supply products. This paper proposes a theoretical explanation for this phenomenon, using concepts from economics and theories of self-organization. Once available on the Internet, information is intrinsically not a scarce good, as it can be replicated virtually without cost. Moreover, freely distributing information is profitable to its creator, since it improves the quality of the information, and enhances the creator's reputation. This provides a sufficient incentive for people to contribute to open access projects. Unlike traditional organizations, open access communities are open, distributed and self-organizing. Coordination is achieved through stigmergy: listings of "work-in-progress" direct potential contributors to the tasks where their contribution is most likely to be fruitful. This obviates the need both for centralized planning and for the "invisible hand" of the market.

PS:  This article is about projects like open-source coding and Wikipedia that are intrinsically more collaborative than most peer-reviewed research articles.  But how how far does Heylighen's analysis carry over?