On Wed, May 9, 2012 at 8:50 AM, Richard Poynder <[email protected]>
wrote:
Members of the list might be interested in this article on text
mining in The Chronicle of Higher Education:
Â
http://chronicle.com/article/Hot-Type-Elsevier-Experiments/131789/?key=TDl1JFRh
MyxLNHk3NmsQZG1danFtNxgmZHEQPi0pblFRFQ%3D%3D
Â
They might also be interested in some comments on the topic made by
Ann Okerson on Liblicense:
Â
http://listserv.crl.edu/wa.exe?A2=LIBLICENSE-L;b9df11a3.1205
Â
But should it really be necessary for librarians to act as mediators
when researchers want to undertake a text mining project?
I will reply to this as someone who knows about text-mining and has also asked
publishers to provide clear statements of what is and what is not allowed.
(Summary- very little is clear and almost nothing is allowed without
"negotiation".) I assume that this is in scope for the list. Please note that
this discussion has no relevance to Green Open Access as it relates to paid
subscriptions to the literature.
For information the Liblicense discussion included:
"This brought to mind the efforts of various of us (librarians) over
the last few years to have data or text-mining language inserted into
standard library-publisher contracts, pretty much without success.
However, several publishers (including Elsevier) did tell me that,
while not able to insert such clauses, they'd be glad to work with
campus researchers on a trial basis, thus developing a better
understanding of just what such projects entail and in order to be
prepared for requests in the future. Â Not having researchers to bring
to the table, we got no further. Â One of my thoughts as I read today's
article is that a gap still exists between libraries, researchers, and
publishers -- we should have been able to work out such forays before
2012!
PMR : I am glad to see the librarians tried, although they have had no impact.
As they are the actual purchasers they are they ones with the immediate power.
The "experiments" they mention include UBC and Heather Piwowar (a prominent
postdoc researcher) coming to an agreement that she could carry out
content-mining under terms set by Elsevier and mutually agreed during the phone
"negotiation".
I and many others have several problems with this.
* it legitimizes the "ownership" of the content with the publishers.
* It requires the publishers to agree to all content-mining research. This is
not unique to Elsevier - at least 4 other publishers took similar (but even
woollier) positions.
* it does not scale. If there are 2000 research universities and 100 publishers
then the amount of negotiation is immense
* it is unnecessary. It would be possible to agree a protocol for content-mining
on a per-publisher or per-university basis or even (as we are doing in the
creation of a manifesto) on a worldwide basis.
* some publishers have started to suggest additional charges for content-mining.
This must be absolutely resisted.
If the publishers withdrew the additional clauses they have inserted then the
only barriers to content-mining would be technical (server capacity, etc.). They
are not arduous and standard information/web engineering. This shouldn't be
beyond an industry (academia) which spends 10 billion USD on subscriptions and a
lot on repositories.
I have made these views public (e.g. to the Chronicle and soon to other organs)
and offered opinions as to why publishers are so resistant to content-mining. Of
course some are enthusiastically pro - BMC, PLoS, eLife, etc. Any imaginative
publisher should be able to see that there are many positive aspects to
content-mining - more readership, more clicks, etc. But my own survey suggest
san industry which is doing very well with the current model, and can protect it
by doing nothing as academia is too weak/fearful to challenge it (cf Michael
Eisen's correct criticism of Harvard).
What this does is to increase the tensions between the scholarly community and
publishers and marginalize the role of the universities in solving the problem
(which university has made a statement about content-mining?). If the problem is
to be solved it will come from initiatives such as the UK government's and the
EC's and funders. I expect that in the UK there will be enough public
authoritative statement that will effectively legitimize CM outside of publisher
control. At that stage a gold rush for content-mining will develop.
In anticipation of this some of us are drafting a Manifesto for Open Content
Mining (RichardP and Peter Suber are involved) which we hope will create
something as simple and powerful as BOAI/BBB for content-mining.
--
Peter Murray-Rust
Reader in Molecular Informatics
Unilever Centre, Dep. Of Chemistry
University of Cambridge
CB2 1EW, UK
+44-1223-763069
[ Part 2: "Attached Text" ]
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