Background

In the current era, we are producing data in far greater quantities than ever before.

Harnessing the data deluge has been recognised as having the potential to help find solutions for some of society’s biggest challenges, such as climate change, health and demographic change, depleting natural resources, and globalisation.

Whilst the benefits of access to data and the use of techniques such as Text and Data Mining (TDM) to analyse data have been widely acknowledged, the reality  is that there are major barriers preventing access to and exploitation of data. These issues include a lack of legal certainty, restrictive licences provided by publishers, a skills gap and a lack of infrastructure.

This situation has created a need to foster agreement across disciplines and sectors about the real benefits of TDM. We need a strategy for the way forward in terms of creating the conditions for realising these benefits in a way that ensures a positive societal impact.

For this reason, 25 global experts gathered in The Hague on 9-10 December 2014 to write the Hague Declaration. Our belief is that this Declaration will help shape ethical research practice, legislative reform and the development of open access policies and infrastructure.