[Open-access] Fwd: Text and information-mining from content in Wiley journals

Wed Apr 25 14:16:21 UTC 2012

Correspondence with Wiley

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Peter Murray-Rust <pm286 at cam.ac.uk>
Date: Fri, Mar 9, 2012 at 5:07 PM
Subject: Re: Text and information-mining from content in Wiley journals
To: "Campbell, Duncan - Oxford" <dcampbell at wiley.com>
Cc: Patricia Killiard <pk219 at cam.ac.uk>, Edmund Chamberlain <emc59 at cam.ac.uk
>

On Fri, Mar 9, 2012 at 4:16 PM, Campbell, Duncan - Oxford <
dcampbell at wiley.com> wrote:

> Peter****
>
> **
>

I've copied in my colleagues in the Cambridge University Library

>  **
>
> Thanks for getting in touch. We would be happy to discuss your specific
> requirements for text-mining Wiley content, and how we can work with you to
> enable mining in a mutually-acceptable manner.****
>
> **
>

Excellent. You'll appreciate that this is a matter of great public interest
at present and an opportunity to show how helpful publishers are, so I'll
be posting the correspondence on my blog.

I don't have specific requirements. I have the technology to extract facts
from Wiley publications and do scientific research on them and I'd like to
do that. In the first instance I'll analyze which journals contain
chemistry and extract all the chemical facts and then do research on them.
Since the data are factual there is no question of copyright being violated.
As our group is the leading creator of Open Source information-mining
software for chemistry and we are regarded as among the world's experts I
have a large number of collaborators. There are a large number of projects
already but we add at least one a week so there's no point in burdening you
with the details. Here are just 5 to show you the power.

   - scanning the literature for potential antimalarial compounds (Mat
   Todd). We have to search for every compound as there is no golden rule for
   finding drugs against this killer disease
   - finding second harmonic generators for solar panels, leading to
   increased energy efficiency and greenness for the planet
   - Computing the human metabolome. Again we have to find all instances
   where compounds have been mentioned that might be human metabolites
   - Improving the eco-friendliness of chemical reactions. What solvents
   have been used in what reactions? Can we use solvents that are more
   friendly to the planet. Again we need to look at every reaction.
   - Improving the accuracy of computaional chemistry. There are billions
   of dollars spent on trying to predict the structure of matter. We want to
   find every paper and find the most cost effective methods

 There are also many added benefits in scientific information-mining
research itself where I am an acknowledged world expert (sorry to sound
boastful, it's just to assure you I know what I'm doing).

I'm not asking you to get involved in any of the technical details and we
don't need any special technology from the publisher, any special versions
of the articles or any APIs. There is no need to involve CUL in details.
All we need is:

   1. To download and analyze, using machines, papers from Wiley journals
   to which we have subscriptions (we use web-friendly crawling protocols)
   2. An assurance from Wiley that you will not impose technical and
   legal/contractual barriers.
   3. To be able to publish the data on which the science is based (science
   without data is almost worthless as you know)

We give you an assurance that we shan't deliberately publish any copyright
material such as the complete verbatim Version of Record.

>  **
>
> We are keen to enhance the usage of our journal content by encouraging
> text and data mining, and welcome the opportunity to work on a specific
> project with you that would enable us to gain further experience in this
> area.  As you’ll appreciate, at this stage there are still questions around
> access, processing and distribution of the outputs of text mining, which
> Wiley, in common with most other STM publishers, is working through. ****
>
> ** **
>
> I look forward to hearing from you further.****
>
> **
>

There is an urgency. We are keen to start some of these projects within a
day or two as we want to present to the Hargreaves enquiry how valuable
text-mining can be. We therefore only need from you an assurance that we
can employ factual mining and to get into the report we'll need this by
2012-03-14. I am afraid promises of intent are worthless at this stage.
There is only one acceptable answer:

YES - you can go ahead without further permission from Wiley

anything else, I'm afraid will be a NO for Hargreaves.

> **
>
> Duncan****
>
> ** **
>
> ** **
>
> *From:* peter.murray.rust at googlemail.com [mailto:
> peter.murray.rust at googlemail.com] *On Behalf Of *Peter Murray-Rust
> *Sent:* 09 March 2012 09:34
> *To:* Campbell, Duncan - Oxford
> *Subject:* Fwd: Text and information-mining from content in Wiley journals
> ****
>
> ** **
>
> I gather that Bob(sic) Campbell has copied the following message to you,
> but I haven't heard back. Please can I ask you to respond to it?
>
> Thanks
>
> Peter ****
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: *Peter Murray-Rust* <pm286 at cam.ac.uk>
> Date: Wed, Mar 7, 2012 at 8:40 AM
> Subject: Text and information-mining from content in Wiley journals
> To: Robert Campbell <bcampbel at wiley.com>
>
>
> Dear Bob Campbell,
> We were at the meeting last week in Oxford on the "Evolution of
> Scholarship" where you stated that anyone could mine content in Wiley
> journals for factual information, and re-use and republish it. Cambridge
> subscribes to many Wiley journals and I and many other scientists wish to
> mine factual information using machines.
>
> We cannot do this at present as Wiley imposes two barriers:****
>
>    -  legal restrictions of text-mining through contracts (Wiley has in
>    the past threatened scientists with legal action for extracting facts)*
>    ***
>    - Wiley's server-side robots which will shut off the University if we
>    attempt to download publications automatically.****
>
> *I would therefore like you (immediately, as we wish to start
> immediately) to confirm that Wiley will absolutely and for ever allow
> subscribers, at no additional cost, to mine all content for facts in both
> back issues and current publications as soon as they appear.* ****
>
> Answeriing "YES" to this question is all that is required. Any other
> answer, including the request for discussion will be taken as "NO". Please
> reply by the end of today (2012-03-07).****
>
> I have published a background document (
> http://blogs.ch.cam.ac.uk/pmr/2012/03/04/information-mining-and-hargreaves-i-set-out-the-absolute-rights-for-readers-non-negotiable/) which also gives a wide range of illustrations of factual information. In
> places it reads "Elsevier", please substitute "Wiley".****
>
> Please note that we do not need any help from Wiley in systematically
> downloading papers. We shall use a delay of 1 second between downloads and
> we shall not re-publish verbatim the papers we download.****
>
> Thank you and I look forward to your immediately reply and agreement.****
>
> --
> Peter Murray-Rust
> Reader in Molecular Informatics
> Unilever Centre, Dep. Of Chemistry
> University of Cambridge
> CB2 1EW, UK
> +44-1223-763069****
>
>
>
>
> --
> Peter Murray-Rust
> Reader in Molecular Informatics
> Unilever Centre, Dep. Of Chemistry
> University of Cambridge
> CB2 1EW, UK
> +44-1223-763069****
>  ------------------------------
> Blackwell Publishing Limited is a private limited company registered in
> England with registered number 180277.
> Registered office address: The Atrium, Southern Gate, Chichester, West
> Sussex, United Kingdom. PO19 8SQ.
> ------------------------------
>
>

-- 
Peter Murray-Rust
Reader in Molecular Informatics
Unilever Centre, Dep. Of Chemistry
University of Cambridge
CB2 1EW, UK
+44-1223-763069

-- 
Peter Murray-Rust
Reader in Molecular Informatics
Unilever Centre, Dep. Of Chemistry
University of Cambridge
CB2 1EW, UK
+44-1223-763069

-- 
Naomi Lillie
Foundation Administrator and Community Coordinator (Open Bibliography)
Open Knowledge Foundation
http://okfn.org/
Skype: n.lillie
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