Elsevier Opens Its Papers To Text-Mining 52
ananyo writes "Publishing giant Elsevier says that it has now made it easy for scientists to extract facts and data computationally from its more than 11 million online research papers. Other publishers are likely to follow suit this year, lowering barriers to the computer-based research technique. But some scientists object that even as publishers roll out improved technical infrastructure and allow greater access, they are exerting tight legal controls over the way text-mining is done. Under the arrangements, announced on 26 January at the American Library Association conference in Las Vegas, Nevada, researchers at academic institutions can use Elsevier's online interface (API) to batch-download documents in computer-readable XML format. Elsevier has chosen to provisionally limit researchers to 10,000 articles per week. These can be freely mined — so long as the researchers, or their institutions, sign a legal agreement. The deal includes conditions: for instance, that researchers may publish the products of their text-mining work only under a license that restricts use to non-commercial purposes, can include only snippets (of up to 200 characters) of the original text, and must include links to original content."
Re:If the Internet is killing Newspapers (Score:5, Insightful)
If the Internet is killing newspapers, why isn't it killing this dead tree company?
When people stop buying newspapers, they fire the reporters and news correspondants.
When people stop buying scientific journals (and electronic access to such), it doesn't matter. There are still hundreds of professors lined up around the block to try to get published, since it is basically required for them to earn tenure. Anytime you have a barrier to career advancement, the people who own that barrier have a near monopoly and can charge whatever the market will bear. And the market of people trying to advance their career will bear a lot.