Open Access News

News from the open access movement


Wednesday, October 11, 2006

EU text-mining tool for OA sources

The EU Joint Research Centre (JRC) has written text-mining software optimized for OA sources.  The purpose is to help the International Atomic Energy Agency monitor news and research for clues that a country might be violating the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.  From yesterday's announcement:

The JRC has developed software which monitors a wide range of open access sources such as news articles, research papers, reports and satellite images. For example, the system can pick up on discrepancies in what a certain country says at different times or in different places.

Comment.  I'd like to see the EU make the software public and open the source code.  I'm assuming it works with a separable database of cues and sources relevant to nuclear non-proliferation, which could remain classified.  The software was developed at public expense, has general utility, and could serve another urgent public purpose:  accelerating scientific research.  It wouldn't be the only text-mining application around, but I'm assuming that the IAEA wouldn't have chosen it unless it had some strengths missing from other packages.  The public gains when new tools and access policies make public research more useful than it already is --and OA benefits when new tools give authors and publishers an extra incentive to make their work OA.