Giant, free index to world's research papers released online

In a project that could unlock the world's research papers for easier computerized analysis, an American technologist has released online a gigantic index of the words and short phrases contained in more than 100 million journal articles - including many paywalled papers. Gitanjali Yadav, a computational biologist at the University of Cambridge, UK, who studies volatile organic compounds emitted by plants, says she aims to comb through Malamud's index to produce analyses of the plant chemicals described in the world's research papers. Computer scientists already text mine papers to build databases of genes, drugs and chemicals found in the literature, and to explore papers' content faster than a human could read. But they often note that publishers ultimately control the speed and scope of their work, and that scientists are restricted to mining only open-access papers, or those articles they have subscriptions to. Some publishers have said that researchers looking to mine the text of paywalled papers need their authorization. He began with a project to allow scientists to text mine - but not read - a giant store of research papers he's holding on a server in India; an idea he says he's still working on. The only legal question, Carroll adds, is whether Malamud's obtaining and copying of the underlying papers was done without breaching publishers' terms. Another legal researcher, Arul George Scaria at Delhi's National Law University, says that any publishers that tried to use copyright laws to prevent researchers from using the General Index "Would eventually be disappointed".