“Open access has been described as everything from a business model to a movement.”

So said my colleague Roy Kaufman a while ago (see video below). Open access (OA) content provides many benefits, not least the ability to collaborate on research more easily and the rights to re-use or build on the learning of others to advance discovery.

“Open access is part of a wider ‘open’ movement to encourage free exchange of knowledge and resources in order to widen access and encourage creativity.” (JISC, 2019)

It’s not surprising then that more and more content is being published under an open access license these days. At the beginning of 2021, Open access is growing.

But what is Open Access?

In recent years, the scholarly publishing ecosystem has rapidly evolved in response to pressure to accelerate open access. Open access generally involves users being able to gain access to articles in full text from the open web without having to pay a license fee or a pay-per-use fee or having to provide additional information. In this short video, my colleague Roy Kaufman gives further explanation:

For more information about Open Access, check out CCC’s 2022 resource list here.

How can I leverage open access materials in technology-supported research?

The volume of publishing – open access or otherwise – creates a challenge for many researchers and scientists. How do I find the information I need, and how can I know that it’s relevant to my research? Beyond a simple search process, they are using machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI). Scholarly content in XML format is a rich resource to help train such machines through processes such as text mining.

But to train machines well, you need volume. Perhaps, millions of articles.

For some organizations, getting access to XML content – especially in volume – can be a challenge. Not least because it’s important to be sure that that you have authorized access to that content and that you have the rights to mine the content. To get that high volume, open access content may provide a solution.

Some open access licenses (notably CC-BY) support research by also allowing more in-depth uses, including text- and data-mining – the ability to seek and find patterns in masses of data (I wrote about this in a previous post).

At CCC, our core mission includes powering innovation and accelerating knowledge. By combining the value of open access with the value we already provide around XML content, we have created to do just this.

To support research and work with machine learning and AIs:

  • we provide the volume: in excess of 3 million CC-BY articles, already semi-normalized making it easy to ingest;
  • we provide ease of access: easily search for and download what you need, including API access to directly download or import content into your text and data mining tool of choice;
  • we provide only CC-BY content so there is no need for you to obtain separate licenses for commercial mining of these articles ​.

With RightFind XML Open Access, a unified source for machine-readable CC-BY open access articles, we make it simpler to integrate scientific literature into knowledge extraction tools and enrich your outcomes.

Learn more about RightFind XML Open Access here.

Topic:

Author: Carl Robinson

Carl Robinson has been in publishing since 1995 and has worked for Pearson Education, Macmillan Education and Oxford University Press. At CCC, Carl’s focus is upon helping clients look at business vision, goals and strategies around their content and tooling to enable flexibility and readiness to meet the ever-changing demands of the digital market.
Don't Miss a Post

Subscribe to the award-winning
Velocity of Content blog