A broad coalition of STM publishers have been supporting the European Commission's 'Licenses for Europe' initiative to demonstrate their continuing commitment to appropriate copyright and licensing within the new digital landscape which is emerging across the continent. As part of this engagement, publishers have pledged support to a roadmap to enable text and data mining (TDM) for non-commercial scientific research within the European Union.
Thirteen signatories have already committed to granting the necessary copyright licenses to permit TDM of copyright-protected content so that bona-fide researchers at non-commercial institutes are able to use TDM to harness its potential to drive discoveries in medical and scientific disciplines. The International Association of Scientific, Technical and Medical Publishers (STM) issued a variety of sample licenses which publishers can adopt for TDM purposes, and now hope that the TDM roadmap will inspire even greater collaborative working to ensure that big data and big science successfully converge.
The Licenses for Europe dialogues commenced in December 2012 with the formation of four working groups. The STM sector has been an active part of three of those working group led debates. Within Working Group 1: on inter-operability of content delivery platforms and devices as well as multi-territory licensing. Within Working Group 2: STM assisted with the identification of potential legal issues and the determinants of user experience on social and other online platforms. Likewise, user-generated content was exploded, leading to solutions for individualised licensing to be presented.
With the increasing digitisation of content across Europe, it is crucial that this content licensing be smart, speedy and intuitive. It is hoped by all STM publishers that their active and constructive engagement with the Licenses for Europe Working Groups, that the interests of research and knowledge creation can be furthered alongside the maintenance of high levels of copyright and database protection to ensure both a sustainable as well as a digital future.
