Elinor Ostrom and her colleagues started to apply the IAD framework on knowledge commons in 2007. However, the IAD framework is not sufficient to study knowledge commons. They extended the IAD framework into the GKC framework which is better for studying the characteristics of knowledge commons. The Governing Knowledge Commons (GKC) framework is an institutional approach to governing the management or production of knowledge commons. Here, knowledge commons refers to information, science, knowledge, data and other types of intellectual and cultural resources. Thus, the GKC framework is used to govern the sharing and creation of this information. In addition to the components from IAD framework, GKC framework includes resource characteristics as one additional component. The framework also includes the influence from the action arena on resource characteristics.
