ABSTRACT
Publications can undermine as well as strengthen processes of self-determination in other ways. Publishing of ethnobotanical data, for example, automatically converts cultural knowledge into a public resource, making it difficult for the group in question to negotiate specific terms of compensation for the subsequent commercial use of that knowledge. As a result, in some cases the same process of validation that may accord certain political and management advantages may simultaneously create other disadvantages. Registries of biodiversity-related knowledge have been established in order to promote the advantages of publication, without incurring the disadvantages (see Box 4.1).
