Copyright: Text & Data Mining

TDM deploys atomated processes to extract and analyse large amounts of data for research identifying relationships, patterns, trends and other structured analysis. This often involves copying large quantities of copyright material.

Carrying out TDM will usually require:

• Permission from the rights holder 
  OR
• Be covered by the exception in UK copyright law relating to Text and data mining for non-commercial research.

The Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, Section 29A Copies for text and data analysis for non-commercial research enables TDM provided:

• The researcher has lawful access to the work e.g. via a University subscription, Open Access resource or by permission of the rights holder.
  Note: if you have non-University of Stirling collaborators that do not have access to subscribed content, they are not covered by this exception.
• The research is solely for a non-commercial purpose (even if the research is funded by commercial funder).
• Copies made must not be transferred to another, or used for an alternative purpose.
• There is sufficient acknowledgment of copied works (where it is impractical to acknowledge every work in a large-scale analysis it may be adequate to refer to the databases from which the works were obtained)

Library Databases

Although most Library databases may be covered by the Exception to copyright, an unexpected download of large amounts of data may trigger an automatic misuse mechanism to suspend the University's access to a resource.

You are asked to inform the Library prior to downloading large datasets to allow appropriate checks and notification to the database supplier if appropriate. 

Note: data and text mining tools or software are not available from the Library.

Some databases the Library subscribes to have a Jisc Model Licence which includes the following clause:

3.2.10: to download and make copies of the whole or any parts of the Licensed Material for the purposes of, and to perform and engage in computational analysis (including text and data mining) using the Licensed Material for the purpose of research and other Educational Purposes but not for Commercial Use, and to permit Authorised Users to distribute and display and otherwise use (publicly or otherwise), other than for Commercial Use,  the results, provided that such results do not reproduce the whole or a substantial part of any Licensed Material. Copies of Licensed Material made under this Clause 3.2.10 shall be deleted promptly after the computational analysis has been completed.