Researchers are pushing for an end
to publishers' default ban on computer scanning of thousands of papers
to find links between genes and diseases. The scale of new information in modern science is huge; more than 1.5m
scholarly articles are published every year and the volume of data doubles every
three years. No individual can keep up with such a volume, and scientists need
computers to help them digest and make sense of the information. The restrictions placed by publishers on text mining has led campaigners to view
the issue as another front in the
battle
to make publicly funded research work available through "open
access", free at the point of use. That would allow researchers to mine the
content freely without needing to request any extra permissions. Read more on this controversy from the Guardian
here.
