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Springer partners with Copyright Clearance Center

New agreement will help Springer deliver XML content for corporate biomedical text mining

New York | Heidelberg, 23 February 2015

Springer has partnered with Copyright Clearance Center (CCC) on a new solution enabling corporate life sciences researchers to perform text and data mining (TDM) quickly and easily across publishers. As one of the first publishers to sign onto the service, Springer will offer a significant portion of its full-text article content through the CCC service when launched later this year.

TDM is growing exponentially in value as big data has become an important building block of advanced life sciences research. However, the enormous breadth and volume of research, published in thousands of different scientific, technical and medical (STM) journals, creates enormous complexity for those who wish to mine that content. Since each publisher makes its content available through their own unique online services, researchers face a major stumbling block in accessing massive amounts of content from multiple publishers. Without CCC’s solution, scientists have had no single source from which to select and download all of the articles they want to mine in a compliant way.

“We know from our constant, ongoing conversations with customers that text and data mining is critical to their research, but also that the task of going to each publisher individually is time-consuming and complicated,” said Bettina Goerner, Managing Director for Springer’s Corporate Markets and Databases. “We have a vested interest in making research as easy as possible for our customers, and a deep tradition of innovation at Springer, so taking part in CCC’s new venture was an easy decision.”

The new service is focused on making research easier for the end user. Springer will supply CCC with full-text versions of its journal content. CCC will then take Springer’s content, along with that of other participating publishers, normalize the Extensible Markup Language (XML) for consistency across publishers, and make it available to users of the new service. The XML available to users will be based on customer access rights and subscription data provided to CCC by the publishers. Customers can then download the data and upload it to their own in-house systems to use in their research.

“Customers have been looking for a single and compliant source for XML content across multiple publishers,” said Lauren Tulloch, Director, Corporate Products and Services, CCC. “As a trusted partner of the scientific, medical and technical publishing community, CCC is well-positioned to fill this role. We are pleased that Springer is eager to partner with us, and we look forward to launching our service with Springer and other participating publishers this year.”

This partnership with CCC targets the corporate market. For non-commercial research, Springer grants text- and data-mining rights to subscribed content to researchers via their institutions.

Copyright Clearance Center (http://www.copyright.com), a leading global rights-licensing technology organization, provides solutions that simplify compliance for content users, promotes the work of creators and supports the principles of copyright. A rights broker for the world’s most sought-after journals, books, blogs, movies and more, CCC makes it easy for businesses and academic institutions to use, share and store copyrighted material while compensating content creators for their works. With its international subsidiary, RightsDirect, CCC serves more than 35,000 customers and 12,000 publishers around the world.

Springer Science+Business Media (www.springer.com) is a leading global scientific, technical and medical publisher, providing researchers in academia, scientific institutions and corporate R&D departments with quality content via innovative information products and services. Springer is also a trusted local-language publisher in Europe – especially in Germany and the Netherlands – primarily for physicians and professionals working in healthcare and road safety education. Springer published roughly 2,200 English-language journals and more than 8,400 new books in 2013, and the group is home to the world’s largest STM eBook collection, as well as the most comprehensive portfolio of open access journals. In 2013, Springer Science+Business Media generated sales of approximately EUR 943 million. The group employs more than 8,000 individuals across the globe.