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Hi weishuhn, good work, I'll be using this. Can you tell me how you're managing copyright? In my understanding, you're effectively "republishing" abstracts, po
by austinjp 6y ago
Hi weishuhn, good work, I'll be using this.
Can you tell me how you're managing copyright? In my understanding, you're effectively "republishing" abstracts, possibly altering or remixing them too. Presumably the site isn't a commercial concern yet, so there's probably little issue. If the site starts to generate revenue, even if it's just to cover costs, or if it becomes a registered business, does this change the copyright situation for you?
I see that you're using several sources of open data, so perhaps all the data you're using is free from copyright, or has highly permissive copyright e.g. CC0.
For those wondering about open-access, in my understanding that's about _reading_ papers. Putting papers on a website might make the website provider subject to copyright. This applies even to abstracts.
As a minimum, it might be necessary to have a button on your site, weishuhn, to report any paper that has restrictive copyright. You've already noted one example of misclassification, and I know that Crossref and other sources provide their data with a big caveat that it might have inaccuracies. Responsibility cascades to you, unfortunately.
This inevitably leads to a trade-off between completeness of your data vs usefulness of your service. It's a problem I'm wrestling with too!
None of this is criticism, just thoughts from someone working in a similar area. As others have said, it's always good to see innovation like this in literature searching. Good work!