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The plan to mine the world’s research papers

A giant data store quietly being built in India could free vast swathes of science for computer analysis — but is it legal?
  1. Priyanka Pulla

    1. Priyanka Pulla is a freelance journalist based in Bengaluru, India.

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Carl Malamud poses for a portrait in from of data servers at Jawaharlal Nehru University

Carl Malamud in front of the data store of 73 million articles that he plans to let scientists text mine. Credit: Smita Sharma for Nature

Carl Malamud is on a crusade to liberate information locked up behind paywalls — and his campaigns have scored many victories. He has spent decades publishing copyrighted legal documents, from building codes to court records, and then arguing that such texts represent public-domain law that ought to be available to any citizen online. Sometimes, he has won those arguments in court. Now, the 60-year-old American technologist is turning his sights on a new objective: freeing paywalled scientific literature. And he thinks he has a legal way to do it.

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Nature 571, 316-318 (2019)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-019-02142-1

Updates & Corrections

  • Correction 19 July 2019: An earlier version of this feature used the term ‘fair use’ inappropriately — the term isn’t relevant under Indian law.

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