Derived Text Formats as Strategic Transformations of In-Copyright Materials to Support Open Science: A Survey

Christof Schöch


Abstract
Derived Text Formats (DTFs) are the result of a strategic transformation of textual materials that are protected by copyright in their original form, such that the resulting data is useful for computational analyses and can be openly shared following best practices of Open Science without infringing copyright law. This paper aims to provide insights into several key aspects of this concept that is closely related to concepts such as corpus masking, non-consumptive research and extracted features. The paper establishes the motivation for using DTFs, discusses several foundational aspects of the concept and practice, describes ongoing research on issues including copyright, reconstructibility, evaluation and standardization of DTFs, and concludes with a roadmap for future work on DTFs. In this way, this paper provides a broad but concise overview of work on DTFs as a contribution to Open Science practices, with a focus on work in the Digital Humanities.
Anthology ID:
2026.dtf-1.1
Volume:
Proceedings of Leveraging Derived Text Formats to Unlock Copyrighted Collections for Open Science (DTF) @ LREC 2026
Month:
June
Year:
2026
Address:
Palma, Mallorca (Spain)
Editors:
Florian Barth, Keli Du, José Calvo Tello, Philippe Genêt, Piroska Lendvai, Christof Schöch, Thorsten Trippel
Venues:
DTF | WS
SIG:
Publisher:
ELRA Language Resources Association (ELRA)
Note:
Pages:
1–15
Language:
External URL:
https://lrec.elra.info/lrec2026-ws-dtf-01
DOI:
10.63317/29k2v5o6rudf
Bibkey:
Cite (ACL):
Christof Schöch. 2026. Derived Text Formats as Strategic Transformations of In-Copyright Materials to Support Open Science: A Survey. In Proceedings of Leveraging Derived Text Formats to Unlock Copyrighted Collections for Open Science (DTF) @ LREC 2026, pages 1–15, Palma, Mallorca (Spain). ELRA Language Resources Association (ELRA).
Cite (Informal):
Derived Text Formats as Strategic Transformations of In-Copyright Materials to Support Open Science: A Survey (Schöch, DTF 2026)
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