Handke et al. (2021)
Contents
Source Details
Handke et al. (2021) | |
Title: | Copyright's impact on data mining in academic research |
Author(s): | Handke, C., Guibault, L., Vallbé, J. |
Year: | 2021 |
Citation: | Handke, C, Guibault, L, Vallbé, J-J. Copyright's impact on data mining in academic research. Manage Decis Econ. 2021; 1– 18. https://doi.org/10.1002/mde.3354 |
Link(s): | Definitive , Open Access |
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About the Data | |
Data Description: | All research articles on DM from 42 large economies (15 largest EU Member States and 27 largest economies based on national GDP in 2013, according to the World Bank) available on WoS Core Collection Database. The searches total 18,441 DM-related articles between 1993 and 2014, resulting in 966 country-year observations. Some countries were excluded in the data analysis because they could not be classified when considering relevant copyright provisions. Data were collected to generate the variable “DM output”.
In their empirical analysis, for each country and year, the authors adopted the ration of “DM output” and “Research output” as the dependant variables, multiplied by 1000. They defined this last variable as “DM Share”. The authors also classified countries in four different categories with “consent required” as reference category/control group and considering how their copyright law addresses DM. For this purpose, they considered two aspects of the copyright system: whether there are exceptions or limitations to copyright that could be applied to DM by academic researchers; and whether there is any case law that determines the applicability of existing exceptions and limitations in this case. Considering the discrepancy that exists between IP and social practice, they also adopted a “Rule of Law” indicator as reported by the Worldwide Governance Indicators (WGI) for the data analysis. They use this indicator to represent the level of enforcement of quasi-property rights. Finally, the authors used GDP per capita, population size, and broadband penetration as control variables for their econometric analysis. |
Data Type: | Secondary data |
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Cross Country Study?: | Yes |
Comparative Study?: | No |
Literature review?: | No |
Government or policy study?: | No |
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Abstract
“With the proliferation of digital data, data mining (DM)—in the sense of the discovery of valuable structures in large sets of data—is expected to increase the productivity of many types of research. This paper discusses how copyright affects DM by academic researchers. In some territories, academic DM is lawful if researchers have lawful access to input works. In other territories such as the European Union, lawful DM additionally requires specific consent by rights holders. Based on bibliometric data and quasi-experimental research designs, we show that where academic DM requires specific rights holder consent: (1) DM publications make up a significantly lower share of total research output, and (2) stronger rule of law is associated with less DM research. To our knowledge, this study is the first to empirically document an adverse effect of intellectual property (IP) on innovation under particular circumstances. There is strong evidence that copyright exceptions or limitations promote the adoption of DM research.”
Main Results of the Study
The study suggests that:
1. A more permissive copyright framework can be associated with more data mining research. From this perspective, it is possible to imply that the adoption of copyright exceptions or limitations for academic DM research can boost DM research;
2. “Rule of Law” has a moderating effect in countries where there is strong copyright law. However, the combination of restrictive copyright law and strong rule of law reduces DM research output; and
3. There is a market failure in relation to the licensing of data for academic data mining.
Policy Implications as Stated By Author
From a policy perspective, the authors aim to provide better evidence for copyright policy, demonstrating, for example, a possible adverse effect of IP on innovation. They suggest that researchers in the EU and other countries with similar copyright law risk becoming less competitive than other countries with less strict copyright law for this novel type of research involving DM.
Coverage of Study
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