“I’m confident of a mandatory text and data mining deal for researchers” - Science|Business

"Researchers want reform of European copyright law to allow the use of data mining to harvest facts and data from research papers, a practice which to date has been tightly controlled by journal publishers in Europe. If passed it could lead scientists to unearthing hidden data connections, perhaps helping to crack intractable research problems, but also dent the core business of publishing companies, which are campaigning for the right to self-regulate how they manage their content.  Publishers automatically block data mining software programmes, which can download and copy vast amounts of papers, whilst distributing special licences to academics and university libraries to use data mining. If copyright law were to include an exemption for researchers, publishers claim intellectual property could be re-sold by unscrupulous researchers and publisher computer systems could be immobilised by the volume of traffic from text miners. Julia Reda, German Pirate Party member of the European Parliament (MEP), produced an 'own initiative report' on copyright reform in June. In an interview with Science|Business, Reda said the European Commission should not shy away from a clash with publishers, as it edges closer to updating copyright to better suit the digital age ..."