Text and Data Mining (TDM) is a computational process of generating information by extracting and analyzing structured and unstructured data.

Definition:

Article 2(2) of the DSM (Digital Single Market) Directive defines text and data mining (‘TDM’) as:

“any automated analytical technique aimed at analyzing text and data in digital form in order to generate information which includes but is not limited to patterns, trends, and correlations”1.

“Text and data mining (TDM) is the process of deriving information from machine-read material. It works by copying large quantities of material, extracting the data, and recombining it to identify patterns.” (UK Government)

Difference between Text Mining and Data Mining:

Text Mining is the computational process of extracting and analyzing unstructured data to reach a certain pattern of information.

Data Mining is the computational process of extracting and analyzing structured data to reach a certain pattern of information.

Copyrights and legal issues involved in TDM activity?

Text and data mining activities include copying the work, extraction of data, and analysis of data to generate useful information. Copying of any work without the permission of the author or whoever is the owner of the work is a violation of copyrights. In this case, the exception to copyright exists which allows the copying of work for non-commercial research. TDM activity is allowed only for that work that is subscribed by the researchers and they have lawful access to that work. 

According to DSM directives, there are two exceptions to the restrictions on copying for TDM.

1.     According to Article 3 TDM is permitted on copyrighted works where the user has lawful access to the protected work. Lawful access means the rights to read the works which are described as “access to content based on an open access policy or through contractual arrangements between rights holders and research organizations or cultural heritage institutions, such as subscriptions, or through other lawful means.”² Research organizations and cultural heritage institutions involving universities have the primary goal of conducting scientific research and carrying out educational activities are permitted for copying and extraction of data from the copyrighted works if they have “lawful access” to the protected work.  In addition to permitting mining activities Art. 3(2) allows the secure storage and retention of copies of mined works and other subject-matters “for the purposes of scientific research, including for the verification of research results”.

2.     Article 4 permits reproductions of, and extractions from, “lawfully accessible works” for TDM for any purpose. Art. 4 applies only on the condition that right holders have not expressly reserved their rights “in an appropriate manner, such as machine-readable means in the case of content made publicly available online”

1. 2. The proposal The government will negotiate with the world’s leading scientific publishers to set up a nationwide “One nation one subscription” journal-access plan to make the scholarly literature available to everyone for free which is currently limited to the scholars of individual institutions subscribing to it.
2. 3. The proposal The proposal is being developed by the Office of the Principle Scientific Advisor to the Government of India and the Department of Science and Technology (DST). After being approved by the Cabinet, it is likely to happen before the year’s end.
3. 4. Success of plan will depend upon  The willingness of publishers to negotiate nationwide subscription.  If the government could make it cheaper to give access to the paywalled literature to all citizens.
4. 5. The idea of plan emerged from  The discussions about whether the country should join a global open access initiative “Plan S”.  According to Krishnaswamy VijayRaghavan, the principal scientific adviser to the Government of India, the government is not going to join Plan S.
5. 6. What is Plan S ?  Making full and immediate Open Access a reality.  Plan S is an initiative for open access publishing launched in 2018, with the aim of making full and immediate access to the research publications a reality by January 2020, It is supported by an international consortium "cOAlition S”.
6. 7. “With effect from 2021, all scholarly publications on the results from research funded by public or private grants provided by national, regional and international research councils and funding bodies, must be published in Open Access Journals, on Open Access Platforms, or made immediately available through Open Access Repositories without embargo.” (https://www.coalition-s.org/about/) The main Principle of Plan S
7. 8. Plan S supports Gold route  Gold route of Open Access in which the articles are freely and permanently accessible to everyone, immediately after publication. These articles are published under creative commons license and also available to reuse as long as the authors are given proper acknowledgment as the copyrights to their work are retained by authors. These articles can be published in two types of journals.  Fully open access journal, in which articles are freely available online to everyone to read, usually after the author have paid Article Processing Charges.  Hybrid journals, which are subscription-based journals and have the option for Gold open access also if an author wish to publish in this category.  DOAJ (Directory of open access journal) is an online directory of fully open access journals (https://doaj.org/)
8. 9. One Nation one Subscription favours Green route Green route of Open Access is all about the self-archiving permission provided by the publishers to their authors so that they can submit either the preprint or the postprint version of their articles (but before publication in a journal) in institutional repository making it freely accessible to everyone. The copyrights are retained by the publisher and the articles are freely accessible when the embargo period is over ( though the embargo period will not apply in all cases.) However, there is a limited restriction on the reuse of work.
9. 10. Researchers’ rights  Here also the researchers has to wait for the embargo period is over ranging from few months to years to publish in repositories.  “Rights-retention” policies that ensure researchers keep the right to share their work in repositories without breaching copyright agreements. A growing number of institutions like Harvard University and funding agencies behind Plan S have introduced similar policies to keep the researchers rights safe.
10. 11. Researchers’ rights  But according to Rahul Siddharthan, a computational biologist at the Institute of Mathematical Sciences in Chennai, India, and a member of the advisory group, “Existing repositories in India aren’t very popular, so there’s a risk researchers won’t get behind green open access unless policies are enforced”.
11. 12. Ongoing debate on proposal  One group of members in the advisory group wants that government should pay Article Processing Charges (APCs) in reputed Open access journals for the researchers who are unable to bear these charges to publish. “Paying to publish is not good for countries like India, where resources for research are scarce,” says Madhan Muthu, a librarian at Azim Premji University in Bengaluru, who is part of the advisory group.
12. 13.  Rahul Siddharthan, a computational biologist at the Institute of Mathematical Sciences in Chennai, India, and a member of the advisory group, also supports establishing a central government fund to pay APCs for reputable open-access journals.  On the other side some members are against the use of public funding for paying APCs. According to Muthu and Arul Scaria, an intellectual-property researcher at the National Law University in New Delhi and an advisory group member, “public funding should not be spent on publishing fees, in addition to subscription costs”.
13. 14.  Some members suggest that India should be the part of global initiative to reform publishing system, but they are not against the proposal of national subscription if at reasonable rates.  According to Dominique Babini, an open-access advocate with the Latin American Council of Social Sciences in Buenos Aires, “Funding agencies should invest more in local and regional open-access journals that do not require authors to pay to publish, which make up about 70% of those listed in the international Directory of Open Access Journals”
14. 15. References  https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02708-4  https://librarycognizance.blogspot.com/2019/05/gold-and- green-open-access-copyrights.html  https://librarycognizance.blogspot.com/2019/09/open-access- leading-to-goal-of.html  https://www.coalition-s.org/coalition-s-develops-rights- retention- strategy/#:~:text=The%20Rights%20Retention%20Strategy%20i s,with%20a%20CC%20BY%20license

Google Scholar’s feature CASA for off-campus users

The scientific community has come together to find new ways and solutions to the problems being imposed by the pandemic in sharing and accessing knowledge across the globe. The communities have collaborated and worked across the borders to adopt new strategies to disseminate and provide access to information.

CASA is one of the examples, Google and HighWire co-developed CASA (Campus Activated Subscriber Access) to provide access to subscribed content from home when the user's device is not connected to the institution's network.

CASA makes note of a user’s institutional affiliation when they access content from an authorized on-campus location, and then enables continued access to their library’s journal and book holdings from home or when using a device not connected to the institution’s network. - Google Scholar¹

Google Scholar's CASA is free. Users can access all the journals hosted by HighWire and indexed in Google Scholar. It is an automatically enabled authentication enhancement. Google automatically creates an affiliation between the user and their institution when the user visits Google Scholar on campus and connects to the institution’s network. Once the Google scholar records that the user has access privilege to the institution’s subscribed content then it grants them immediate access to the articles and journals when the user is off-campus. The affiliation lasts for one month,br.. Users need to renew it again by visiting and connecting to the campus network and accessing the Google scholar through an institution IP, at least once in a month.

The user needs not to login in Google account. Affiliation is created simply by going on to Google scholar while on their Institution’s network. However, one advantage of logging in Google account while on an institution's network and accessing Google scholar is that their CASA token will persist amongst all of their devices (desktop, laptop, mobile, etc) where they are logged in to that account.

All the libraries that participate in Google scholar will automatically have this feature (CASA) enabled. Instructions for activation can be found here for connecting Google scholar to the libraries' resources and for participating in Google scholar.

References:

1. https://www.igi-global.com/librarians/casa/
2. https://www.highwirepress.com/resources/data-sheets/casa-faq/