Open Access Week – thank you MRC

[MRC] If an open access fee has been paid MRC requires authors and publishers to licence research papers such that they may be freely copied and re-used for purposes such as text and data mining, provided that such uses are fully attributed. This is also encouraged where no fee had been paid.

PS Comment. I praised the agreement at the time and I stand by my assessment: “When a funder pays a publisher to make an article OA, the publisher should remove permission barriers as well as price barriers. But too often publishers have only removed price barriers. This agreement to remove a key set of permission barriers is an important step forward that will help users get their work done (both human and machine users), help funders get full value for their investment, and help all players live up to the full BBB definition of OA.” Kudos to the MRC for finally reflecting the terms of the agreement on its own web site.

PMR: This is so helpful. First the language can be understood by ordinary scientists. You don’t need to know about Green and Gold. There are no fudges. You can use the material what whatever purpose you like. The MRC took one sentence to state it. “text and data mining”. Explicit.
Besides immediately releasing (modulo some embargo) their own research for text- and data-mining they also set the minimum bar for others.

• Howard Hughes – do you require the removal of permission barriers, so allowing text- and data-mining? last time I looked this was a fuzzy hybrid mess, but I think the answer was “well um err probably not”
• PMC – do you require the removal of permission barriers? Answer clearly no at present.
• UKPMC – almost certainly same as PMC
• Wellcome. I’m not sure. I thought they had removed permission barriers but now I’m worried.
• CancerResearch UK?

So it’s simple, absolute and attainable. Klaus Graf put it in 31 ANSI characters: