Abstract:

Knowledge Production, Sharing and Transfer are key processes for Innovation in the Globalised Economy. These processes strongly rely on the efficient Circulation of Scientific Information: to produce new knowledge from existing knowledge, to share and transfer knowledge within and outside the scientific community. Therefore, within the overall context of education in universities, pivotal becomes the goal of educating students and researchers on Scientific Information Access and Use.

In addition to this, the growing influence of economic objectives both in the dissemination of information and in the interdependence between science and industry has led to significant problematic issues, especially due to the coexistence of conflicting interests in the scientific enterprise. And in this context central becomes as well the goal of educating university students and researchers on Intellectual Property issues, thus enhancing the fair use of Scientific Information.

In view of the above, pillars of the paper are both Scientific Information and Intellectual Property, conceived as transversal skills to be taught to university students and researchers. In particular, the paper will deal with Intellectual Property as the ethical dimension of Information Literacy, as well as with the curricular configuration for this educational intervention. The different forms of curricular configuration for Intellectual Property as part of Information Literacy in Higher Education courses is studied on.

The methodology in the paper will be moving from the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) formal definition of Intellectual Property, identifying the main disciplinary areas interested in the study of Intellectual Property Regulation.

Teaching of Intellectual Property regulation traditionally falls within the framework of Legal Education. In this paper, however, a particular perspective of analysis is adopted, that relating to the institutional sources of information in the fields of Industrial Property, Copyright and Intellectual Property at large. This point of view broadens the audience of the recipients of the training, also - and above all - to disciplinary fields outside the legal and information disciplines. This expansion, in turn, requires particular characteristics of the syllabus, which are suitable for disciplinary fields not specialised in legal matters, nor in information science.

Keywords:

Information Literacy, Intellectual Property, Education and Research Links, Higher and Further Education, Curriculum Design and Development, Transferring Skills.