Hi Peter, Â
Thanks for this. Iâve communicated that we are happy in principle for you to mine our content, and there are only some practical issues to resolve. We have successfully concluded the technical discussion, and I believe you, your colleagues, and my technical colleagues are all happy with the proposed technical mechanism. Next, Iâld like to double-check that I have correctly understood what you and your colleagues will do and who will have access to which content/extracts. Finally, we have an existing agreement with the U of Cambridge library and we need to ensure there is some language in that agreement â or a side letter - to enable content-mining. We arenât far off at all â and I suspect we could resolve this in 1, possibly 2, quick conversations.  If you prefer not to interact with the Cambridge librarians, I can do this separately.  Perhaps it would be helpful for me to clarify the important role that I believe the Cambridge library has to play. This role is not to vet your research to see if you can carry it out, but to ensure that the language necessary to enable this to happen is included in their various agreements with publishers.  This is the way that libraries have been able to create the existing information environment on campus where you, and your colleagues, can access e-journals from home or your office or out in the field. All the agreements/arrangements/technology that the library has put in place to create this environment, and to ensure that it is easy to access and use, are generally invisible to researchers - even those who use this information environment on a daily basis.  This is the sort of environment/experience needed for researchers who wish to text mine as well. As an early adopter â indeed a pioneer in text mining â you are forging a trail. Librarians will help to maintain that trail so that many, many others can follow easily in your footsteps.  With kind wishes,  Alicia  Dr Alicia Wise Director of Universal Access Elsevier I The Boulevard I Langford Lane I Kidlington I Oxford I OX5 1GB P: +44 (0)1865 843317 I M: +44 (0) 7823 536 826 I E: a.w...@elsevier.com I Twitter: @wisealic   From: goal-boun...@eprints.org [mailto:goal-boun...@eprints.org] On Behalf Of Peter Murray-Rust Sent: 11 May 2012 23:47 To: Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci) Subject: [GOAL] Re: OA and scholarly publishers   On Fri, May 11, 2012 at 1:16 PM, Richard Poynder <ri...@richardpoynder.co.uk> wrote: Many thanks to Alicia Wise for starting a new conversation thread.  Letâs recall that Aliciaâs question was, âwhat positive things are established scholarly publishers doing to facilitate the various visions for open access and future scholarly communications that should be encouraged, celebrated, recognized?â Alicia Wise already knows my reply - she has had enough email from me. The publishers show withdraw contractual restrictions on content-mining. That's all they need to do. My university has paid Elsevier for subscription to the content in Elsevier journals. I believe I have the right to mine the content. Elsevier has written a contract which forbids me to use this in any way other than reading with human eyeballs - I cannot crawl it, index it, extract content for whatever purpose. I have spent THREE years trying to deal with Elsevier and get a straight answer. Seehttp://blogs.ch.cam.ac.uk/pmr/2011/11/27/textmining-my-years-negotiating-with-e lsevier/ The most recent "discussions" ended with Alicia Wise suggesting that she and Cambridge librarians discuss my proposed research and see if they could agree to my carrying it out. I let the list decide whether this is a constructive offer or a delaying tactic. It certainly does not scale if all researchers have to get the permission of their librarians and every publisher before they can mine the content in the literature. And why should a publisher decide what research I may or may not do? All of this is blogged on http://blogs.cam.ac.uk/pmr Yes - I asked 6 toll-access publishers for permission to mine their content before I submitted my opinion to the Hargreaves enquiry. Of the 6 publishers (which we in the process of summarising - this is hard because of the wooliness of the language) the approximate answers were: 1 possibly 4 mumble (e.g. "let's discuss it with your librarians") 1 no (good old ACS pulls no punches - I'd rather have a straight "no" than "mumble")  In no other market would vendors be allowed to get away with such awful customer service. A straight question deserves a straight answer, but not in scholarly publishing. Just in case anyone doesn't understand content mining, the technology is straightforward. The only reason it's not done is because Universities are afraid of publishers. I estimate that tens of billions of dollars worth of value is lost through being forbidden to mine the scholarly literature. If Alicia Wise can say "yes" to me unreservedly, I'll be happy. P. -- Peter Murray-Rust Reader in Molecular Informatics Unilever Centre, Dep. Of Chemistry University of Cambridge CB2 1EW, UK +44-1223-763069 Elsevier Limited. Registered Office: The Boulevard, Langford Lane, Kidlington, O xford, OX5 1GB, United Kingdom, Registration No. 1982084 (England and Wales). [ Part 2: "Attached Text" ] _______________________________________________ GOAL mailing list GOAL@eprints.org http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal
