Mining for Europe

With the Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market going through the Trilogue stage of the legislative process, there is a very real chance of an EU wide text and data mining exception coming into force in the next few years. The precise nature and nuance of the exception are still subject to debate but the prospect of an exception, even one limited to research institutions and non-commercial research purposes, is exciting. It offers huge potential for EU lead developments in 21st century technologies, and opens up new and tantalising research opportunities.

Many e-resource licences agreed by libraries allow institutions to archive and preserve content licensed during subscription periods. Services such as Portico, Lockss and Clockss all contain a huge wealth of journal, and similar content, structured, organised and ready should suppliers and publishers withdraw from the market place, or face technological issues.

There are some differences but it seems that the UK exception is very similar to the one being discussed by the EU. It is likely that researchers engaged in non-commercial research will have the ability extract knowledge from data sources without the need to license the content from owners. This ability will apply to any source of data that the researcher has legal access to including online sources openly available, and content available under licence via an institutional library for example.

The prospect of an EU wide exception for text and data mining combined with the opening up of access to ‘dark’ archives and/ or institutional repositories represents a fantastic opportunity for researchers. Being able to access and acquire content from across the EU without the need for extensive complex licensing and legal support, offers a competitive advantage for EU researchers and institutions over and above many of their international peers. A combined platform with data, knowledge and information from across the archives and repositories could lead to more world leading research arising from EU institutions impacting on millions of individuals.