TDM on University Collections and Subscribed Resources
On this page you can find out more information about some of the material we subscribe to and how this can be used in TDM research projects by our staff and students.
The University Library manages subscriptions to a wide range of external materials, in addition to our owned University collections.
The table below provides information on a selection of platforms subscribed to by the University of Sheffield. You can find out what other platforms are subscribed to using the Library’s databases A-Z guide. Please check the policy of the database you wish to use before downloading any data for the purpose of text and data mining.
Conditions of use for each platform will be provided by the publisher on application. Restrictions may include:
- use for non-commercial research purposes only
- restriction on the length of time data may be retained (e.g. delete at end of project)
- potential restrictions on sharing outputs / exclusive ownership of outputs
- a specific form of acknowledgement may be required
- technical restrictions (e.g. must use publisher API or only text and data mine within certain times of day)
Remember that, Under section 29A of the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, researchers at UK institutions have a legal right to carry out text and data mining (TDM) on lawfully accessed content for the purpose of non-commercial research. If you are a University of Sheffield researcher and have any questions about this you can contact the Library for further advice.
All information correct at time of publication.
| Publisher | Access | Next steps |
|---|---|---|
| ACM (Association of Computing Machinery) | Access to a research data set which contains extracted metadata and text from PDFs for everything ACM has published since its inception. | Contact dlteam@acm.org to request access (users will be requested to complete a Letter of Agreement on the Use of ACM-supplied Digital Library data for Research Purposes). |
| IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) | Use of API to search metadata as default with potential to download full text of PDFs as a follow on step (with a daily limit). | Register for an API key online at IEEE's account registration page. |
| Gale Digital Scholar Lab | Gale Digital Scholar Lab provides text and data mining resources, visualisation tools, and methodology suggestions. It enables you to use digital humanities methodologies to explore Gale Primary Sources collections and your own documents. | Access via the University of Sheffield Gale Digital Scholar web pages (you will be prompted to log into MUSE). |
| Nature | One API key available via University subscription allowing TDM on subscribed, full text content. | Contact the Library in the first instance to ask if the key is available. |
| Nexis | TDM available via manual download. Download limits: Per Minute Throttle Limit 100 | Further information and how to apply for access at Nexis Data. |
| Oxford University Press (OUP) Read and Publish Journal Subscriptions | Non-commercial text and data mining is permitted on OUP journals that fall under the University of Sheffield’s read and publish licence agreement. Rate throttle is limited to 25 content requests per minute. OUP requires sufficient acknowledgement of any materials or collections used in any TDM activity, for example on publication of results. Copies of the licensed material must be deleted promptly after the computational analysis of these materials has been completed. You must not transfer copies of any OUP content to any person, organisation, or third-party other than authorised users. This includes for the development of large language models or for any purpose other than the approved text processing analysis. | Further information on how to apply for access is available at Oxford Academic. You can contact the Library or OUP data mining enquiries for further details. |
| Taylor & Francis | TDM on subscribed content including text, data and images can be conducted via a dedicated IP on application. | Contact Taylor & Francis Support to arrange access. |
| SAGE Publications | TDM can be conducted on subscribed Sage journals content via IP on application. | More information and details on how to apply for access are available at the Sage Journals data mining page. |