What is text mining, how does it work and why is it useful? This article will help you understand the basics in just a few minutes.

Introduction by OpenMethods Editor (Helen Katsiadakis): This article explains the  concept, the uses and the procedural steps of text mining. It further provides information regarding available teaching sources and encourages readers to use the OpenMinTeD platform for the purpose.

The goal of OpenMinTeD is to create an infrastructure that allows text mining tools to be easily used to analyse scientific (related) publications. At this moment, researchers use many different tools and methods for text mining, each specific for their specialty or research question. On top of that they have to look for content in many different places and figure things out on their own. OpenMinTeD is a joint initiative of 16 institutes that work on providing a platform where these different tools and resources can be combined and easily used. The project supports the training of prospective users and developers. It also aims to demonstrate the benefits of using text mining for users of any background – be they research experts or scholars.