Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin and Elsevier Collaborate in New Advanced Data & Text (HEADT) Centre

BERLIN, April 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

Cooperative Venture to Explore Early Detection of Research Integrity Issues and to Develop Tools for Text & Data Mining  

Humboldt-Innovation GmbH, the technology transfer office of Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin and Elsevier, a world-leading provider of scientific, technical and medical information products and services, announced the launch of the Humboldt Elsevier Advanced Data & Text (HEADT) Centre. The HEADT Centre brings together experts from Elsevier and researchers from Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin to explore innovative ways to better serve the needs of researchers, practitioners and other members of the scientific community in order to reduce barriers to mining content and to identify research misconduct. The Centre wants to enhance basic research in these fields.

Two projects will run under the umbrella of this cooperative venture of Humboldt-Innovation and Elsevier. The first project aims to provide scalable computing infrastructures and algorithms to improve computer-aided discovery, enhancing the efficiency of text and data mining (TDM). The project is led by Johann-Christoph Freytag, Professor for Databases and Information Systems at the Humboldt-Universität with support from Dr. Flavio Villanustre, Vice President of Technology Architecture and Product for LexisNexis and leads the High Performance Computing Cluster (HPCC) Systems at Elsevier. The second project will focus on research integrity issues such as plagiarism, image manipulation, data falsification and fabrication, which pose important problems for researchers, universities and publishers alike. This project is headed by Professor Michael Seadle, Director of the School and Vice-Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Humanities I at Humboldt-Universität. He is supported by Dr. IJsbrand Jan Aalbersberg, Senior Vice President of Research Integrity at Elsevier.

TDM and research integrity are important research areas for both Humboldt-Universität and Elsevier. "Our collaboration will draw on strengths in areas like digital resources, data quality, big data and research integrity," explains Prof. Michael Seadle. "Elsevier will provide internal experts, access to its research text and data and large scale technology via text and data mining platforms including HPCC Systems and ScienceDirect. It is a great opportunity for both of us to work together on such important topics."