Yes. And often there are digital sources which are difficult to use and blocked by copyright. For example, the Chicago Assyrian Dictionary is publicly available as scanned PDFs which are not searchable :/ . I suppose that with the current state of computer vision and text interpretation, it's just a matter of some labor needed to set up some pipelines. But if a citizen assyriologist were to do the work and make the results publicly available, the copyright owners would very likely sue.
> But if a citizen assyriologist were to do the work and make the results publicly available, the copyright owners would very likely sue.
Have you actually reached out to them or are you speculating? I found the Editor-in-Charge's email address very easily. If you write a letter to them and politely explain what you are thinking about doing they might even provide suggestions and/or help.
These are people who put the full dictionary on their website as PDFs for free. They have an "Integrated Database Project" they are working on. I don't know for sure but it sounds like they want the info to be as accessible as possible.
As sibling poster pointed out, the researchers themselves likely would prefer that their work be available to all, and that it is not will be by decree of someone other than themselves.
In that vein, I have never once failed (across at least several dozen attempts) to obtain a gratis copy of a paper by writing an author directly, even if I don't have access to the journal which published it. More often than not the researcher has been thrilled to have been contacted by a random person with interest in their work; I've had some interesting personal interactions and several times had follow-up questions answered. I highly recommend doing this.
Edit: you probably know this. I'm posting my experience for the benefit of others who may come across these comments. Most people in academia are nerds at heart, and very nice to anyone who shares their interests.
This is only because very few people actually do so. If even all of HN readers did this regularly some researchers on popular subjects would get annoyed at all the requests.
> If even all of HN readers did this regularly some researchers on popular subjects would get annoyed at all the requests.
True. That is the reason why I haven't shared the email I found for example.
I think that is why being polite, and civil is such a key thing in this. Also understanding that the researcher who you reached out to might not have the bandwidth to answer you. (They have term papers to grade, and classes to prepare for, and articles to write/review and who knows what else.) One can send an even more polite follow up email a few weeks later. And maybe a third one a year later kind of a "here is where I got with the project" kind. But keeping it polite, civilised, and low volume is the right way to go about it. And definitely not demanding anything or having an expectation of them even answering.
It is kind of a special case of the golden rule. Write the letter you yourself would be happy receiving.
Curiously enough, I've recently been on the receiving end of something like this. Someone found the website I've maintained for a long-since mothballed creative project. He then found my personal email address (not hard, though it's not posted on that site), and has been sending me his own absolutely wackadoodle theories. His messages are too long to do more than skim, but not frequent enough to be more annoying than they are entertaining - but I've very deliberately not replied. So... Top tip: don't be That Guy.
No, I didn't because this is a project that I can't pursue. But the usual situation in academia (and, I guess, anything that is not self-published) is that the copyright owners of publications are not even the scientific institutions that produce those materials, much less the researchers themselves.
People who are interested on the subject and who may want to pursue a project like this one are likely to be academics or ex-academics, and they know beforehand that it's not just the technical work they need to put on, but also everything connected to matters of intellectual property involving multiple parties. That knowledge is enough to discourage most.
> I didn't because this is a project that I can't pursue.
Okay. No worries. I don't have time for it either. :)
> That knowledge is enough to discourage most.
I see that you are discouraged. I say this in the kindest way possible: have you considered that maybe the barriers you perceive are only there in your own mind?
> the copyright owners of publications are not even the scientific institutions that produce those materials
"COPYRIGHT UNDER THE INTERNATIONAL COPYRIGHT UNION, 1959 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED by THE ORIENTAL INSTITUTE, CHICAGO, ILLINOIS" is what the dictionary itself says.
These are the people behind the "The Electronic Publications Initiative of the Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures"[1]. (as I learned by clicking the "terms of use" button next to the download links of the dictionary.) Based on that it seems they wouldn't want you to host the files on your own site, and they don't want you to sell copies of their books, or profit from it in other ways but you could very likely just make the search system which refers people to the right page of their dictionary without copying their actual entries. That seems to be fair play both legally and on an emotional level. If you want a more integrated search experience that is where reaching out to them and hosting it on their own site could work.
I know nothing about assyriology and copyright things can indeed suck, but these people in particular seem to be good eggs. It is possible that secretly they are copyright Scrooge McDuck about their dictionary but if so they are going very weirdly about it.
It's encouraging to see how digital tools are helping address the "legacy data backlog". This aligns well with the collaborative open-science approach.
