The Publishers Licensing Society recently conducted a survey of text and data mining activity to which ALPSP Members were invited to respond.  A total of 111 unique responses were received and the results will be unlikely to surprise many of those involved in scholarly and professional publishing.

Overall, approaches from those wishing to mine data have been small, totalling 91 for the whole of 2014.  Only 15% of respondents reported receiving requests to mine data. It was interesting to note that all 111 respondents indicated they had seen no significant change in the number of requests following the introduction of the UK exception.

What is contributing to such a low number of requests?  There are at least two industry-related reasons:

1. More publishers are including a clause in their subscription licences which allows and clarifies the access to the content for TDM.
2. The introduction of services such as CrossRef TDM and CCC’s XML for Mining.  PLSClear also helps streamline permission requests, meaning that publishers are dealing with manually.

Respondents also noted, in all but one instance, that requests were cleared in less than 2 weeks.

Audrey McCulloch
Chief Executive