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We are calling on Elsevier to withdraw its TDM policy. Image by LIBER / CC-BY.
Eighteen European research and library organisations, including LIBER, are today calling on Elsevier to withdraw its current policy on text and data mining (TDM)
Our request has been laid out and explained in an open letter to Michiel Kolman, Senior VP Global Academic Relations at the academic publishing company.
We believe that Elsevier’s current TDM policy places unnecessary restrictions on researchers. It limits their ability, and their right, to mine content to which they have legal access.
TDM allows researchers to derive information from articles and datasets by seeking patterns in text and data, including the use of robots to ‘crawl’ through information directly. It enables rapid searches of vast quantities of text and data to produce new discoveries and analyses that individual readers could not achieve, but in order to be most effective it will require the agreement of new protocols, and the renegotiation of access restrictions.
The UK has already legislated to remove licensing restrictions on TDM, and we would hope to see publishers supporting a similar move in Europe, for the benefit of all our research and knowledge communities.
In this letter we outline some of the ways in which the Elsevier policy restricts researchers’ abilities to perform TDM by requiring them to register their details and agree to a click-through license that can change at any time, and how it unfairly mandates conditions by which research outputs derived from TDM can be disseminated.
We provide constructive alternatives in every instance, and hope to continue advocating for conditions by which TDM can become an increasingly valuable tool for European researchers.
The signatories are:
- LIBER Europe
- ADBU
- CRISTIN
- CSUC
- EBLIDA
- ENCES
- FinELib Consortium
- Finnish Research Library Association (STKS)
- IFLA
- LATABA Library Association of Latvia
- LERU
- Open Knowledge Foundation Germany
- Portuguese Association of Librarians, Archivists and Documentalists
- REBIUN
- Research Libraries UK
- SPARC Europe
- Wellcome Trust
This letter is part of LIBER’s larger campaign for a European copyright exception for TDM. We believe that the right to read is the right to mine.
For enquiries or to add your signature to this letter (as an organisation or as an individual), please contact Susan Reilly, Advocacy & Projects Manager at LIBER. Email: susan.reilly@kb.nl Phone: +31 (0)70 314 01 60.
About the author
LIBER is Europe's leading network of research libraries, with over 400 members.
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Hi,
I thought it might be helpful if I clarified Elsevier’s policy as regards text and data mining and provided links to some more detailed information:
Our policy enables researchers to text and data mine content to which their institution has legal access, whether via a license or an exception, for non-commercial research purposes. We also provide infrastructure to support text mining in a way that works both for prospective miners and for those reading content on our platforms. We welcome feedback from the community and consistently revisit our policies to ensure they are fit for purpose as TDM is continually evolving.
Readers can learn more about our approach in two articles we recently published in Elsevier Connect: Elsevier updates text-mining policy to improve access for researchers (http://www.elsevier.com/connect/elsevier-updates-text-mining-policy-to-improve-access-for-researchers) and How does Elsevier’s text mining policy work with new UK TDM law? (http://www.elsevier.com/connect/how-does-elseviers-text-mining-policy-work-with-new-uk-tdm-law)
Dear Gemma,
Thank you for your comment. We are indeed aware of the two articles on your text and data mining policy published in Elsevier Connect. As you will have read in our open letter, we do not believe that researchers should be compelled to use an API, and sign a click-through licence, in order to mine content to which they have legal access to. Moreover, limiting researchers who already have the right to mine content to which they have legal access to under a specific copyright exception (e.g. in the UK) to access for mining via a specific API does not constitute “reasonable measures”. Access via an API still limits the content to which researchers have access to (e.g. by excluding images and figures) and, in order to gain access via the API, it obliges researchers to sign a click-through licence which they should have no legal obligation to sign as they already have the legal right to mine the content.
In short, the Elsevier policy is not fit for purpose as it limits both access for, and the outputs of, text and data mining.
Hi Susan,
We have taken the opportunity to respond fully to your open letter and this is available here: http://www.elsevier.com/__data/assets/pdf_file/0004/208948/TDM_openletter.pdf
We look forward to hearing from you.
Kind regards
Gemma