by Freyja van den Boom, Researcher, Open Knowledge International

1. OpenDataMonitor
Horizon 2020
Coordination and Support Action
GARRI-3-2014 Scientific Information in the Digital Age: Text and Data Mining (TDM)
Project number: 665940
Stakeholder Consultations
FutureTDM
Reducing Barriers and Increasing Uptake of Text and Data Mining for Research Environments
using a Collaborative Knowledge and Open Information Approach
FTDM workshop/Brussels
27 september 2016

2. What have we learned from talking with the TDM community?
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3. FutureTDM: TDM community
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4. Involve: stakeholder consultations
The FutureTDM Knowledge Cafe's
‘an informal opportunity for stakeholders to find out about TDM, the FutureTDM
project and its goals and to provide the project with feedback.’
The expert and practitioners interviews
’ to find, challenge and/or provide evidence for what are considered to be
barriers for text and data mining (TDM) in Europe. ‘
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5. Overview: stakeholder consultations
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6. Overview: Interviews and Case Studies
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7. Challenges: Technical and infrastructure
Availability of TDM tools and services
TDM is getting better but the accuracy of tools must be high enough so that
scientists can rely on it.’
Access and data quality
‘It is a problem when data is not in a TDM friendly format.’
Lack of a standard API across all platforms makes TDM very time consuming for
lawful users to gain access in a quick and reliable way.
Infrastructure
‘ Ideally what you want is a web based modular system ‘
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8. Challenges: Economy and Incentives
Market (access)
Availability of TDM tools and services
‘Compared to the academic sector, the corporate sector is willing to pay for
solutions ‘
Funding
‘In chemistry and biology for example, research groups often do combined
applied and academic research. How much money from your project do you
want to dedicate to infrastructure?’
(non) Commercial
Need for examples :‘ Sell the concept better’

9. Challenges: Education and skill
Precondition
‘ Data has to be available and in a useful format because otherwise these
skills cannot be developed in the first place.”
Awareness
‘If we want to move towards a highly technological and sophisticated society
a lot more investment in education and research is needed in general.’
Knowledge and Skill gap
‘We are still getting skilled graduates but their skillset isn’t a very good
match with TDM’
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10. Challenges: Legal and Content
Legal clarity and awareness
Access/use We [researcher] would always prefer to use freely available over
data without license strings attached even if that data was of better quality’
Data Protection/Personal data
Copyright / Harmonization
Harmonization is a mixed blessing for companies because may introduce
additional barriers for using data from web sources.
On proposed solutions
‘Copyright exception presumes there is an issue around access to content.
Researchers who have lawful access to content are able to text mine with
publishers. ‘
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11. To conclude: considerations
● Uncertainty
● Not a ‘one fits all’ solution.
● Given its complexity: the benefits
of TDM would best be achieved
through collaboration
Next steps:
Focus of how to overcome the
identified barriers looking at best
practices and recommendations
in practice
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12. Contact:
Freyja.vandenboom@okfn.org
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