Hello John, I don't think that the terms of use will restrict you from doing what you want with the data - a visualization project, as part of Academic research. The terms of use are displayed on the website's download page:
# TERMS OF USE: # # - Permission is granted to copy and distribute verbatim copies # of this file, but CHANGING IT IS NOT ALLOWED. # # - This annotation can be used in any website or application, # provided its source (the Quranic Arabic Corpus) is clearly # indicated, and a link is made to http://corpus.quran.com to enable # users to keep track of changes. # # - This copyright notice shall be included in all verbatim copies # of the text, and shall be reproduced appropriately in all works # derived from or containing substantial portion of this file. These terms of use are very similar to the terms used to license the electronic Quranic text of the Tanzil project. In essence, these terms of use are designed to protect the data against the following scenario. Another Quran publication (a website or book) may decide use a snapshot of the data and publish it without specifying its source (the Quranic Arabic Corpus). Given the sensitive nature of the Quran as a religious text, this is quite a problematic scenario because it means that researchers could then be using an outdated and hence a possibly incorrect version of the grammatical annotation. The Quranic Arabic Corpus website has an online message board for collaborative annotation, in which volunteers discuss the existing analyses, and scrutinize each part of the grammar to improve accuracy. Because you intend to use the data for visualization, and from what I understand it is for academic research, I don't think that this would violate the terms of use along as: (1) A citation and reference is given to the original source of the data (The Quranic Arabic Corpus – http://corpus.quran.com) (2) In addition, EITHER the original data set is not published (i.e. the morphological annotation download file) (3) OR if (2) does not apply, if you do want to publish your visualization data set which includes part of the Quranic Arabic Corpus, this should be fine as long as a reference is cited. This is possible because from what I understand, you don't want to change any of the Arabic words or the morphological features, just change the format and/or supplement this with new data purely for visualization research. In summary, for your visualization project, I don’t see any of this being an issue as long as a citation is provided. The situation we are trying to avoid with these terms of use is where the data is used without reference in its original source, or if the Quranic words or grammatical annotation is modified. The end aim of this is to prevent other websites or publications using an old outdated version of the data, so that researchers and Quranic students get old and hence possibly incorrect grammatical information without any possibility of correction. Good luck with the visualization project, it sounds quite interesting. Please feel free to use the data as you see fit. If you have any further questions on the nature of the data, I would be happy to help. You can find the morphological dataset documented in further detail online here: http://corpus.quran.com/documentation/morphologicalfeatures.jsp It also just occurred to me, it would be great to know more about the visualization tool itself - forgive me, I'm just a bit curious :-) Kind Regards, -- Kais Dukes Language Research Group School of Computing University of Leeds http://corpus.quran.com - The Quranic Arabic Corpus comp-quran@comp.leeds.ac.uk - Computional Quranic Arabic discussion list > On Tue, Feb 9, 2010 at 6:03 AM, John S. Y. Lee <jsy...@cityu.edu.hk> wrote: > Hi Kais, > > Thank you for your reply, and I look forward to the completion of the > dependency graphs. Meanwhile, we hope to start using the morphological > analyses, and I'd like to consult you on the terms of use of the corpus. > > We are working on a data visualization tool and are interested in using the > corpus as a dataset. While the words themselves and their morphological > analyses will be preserved verbatim, the data format would need to be altered > before it can be fed to our existing software. Would this pose any problem? > > Regards, > John > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: Kais Dukes <dukes.k...@googlemail.com> > Date: Friday, February 5, 2010 7:32 pm > Subject: Syntactic annotation for the Quranic Arabic Corpus > To: jsy...@cityu.edu.hk > Cc: comp-quran@comp.leeds.ac.uk > > >> Hi John, >> >> Thank you for your interest in the Quranic Arabic Corpus. You may find >> the following previous post relevant: >> >> http://www.mail-archive.com/comp-quran@comp.leeds.ac.uk/msg00059.html >> >> I hope that helps. >> >> Kind Regards, >> >> -- Kais Dukes >> >> Language Research Group >> School of Computing >> University of Leeds >> >> http://corpus.quran.com - The Quranic Arabic Corpus >> comp-qu...@comp.leeds.ac.uk - Computional Quranic Arabic discussion list >> >> > ------------------------------------------- >> > From: John S. Y. Lee[SMTP:jsy...@cityu.edu.hk] >> > Sent: Tuesday, February 02, 2010 8:06:47 AM >> > To: Kais Dukes >> > Subject: Syntactic annotation for the Quranic Arabic Corpus >> > >> > Dear Kais Dukes, >> > >> > I recently downloaded a copy of your Quranic Arabic Corpus, which >> includes four files, two in XML format and two in plain text. While >> morphological annotation is included in these files, syntactic >> annotation (i.e., dependency graphs) does not seem to be. Is the >> syntactic annotation also publicly available, and if so, is there a >> separate procedure for obtaining it? >> > >> > Thank you for your attention. >> > >> > Regards, >> > John Lee >> >
