[Corpora-List] BAWE corpus now archived and available

[Steven Bird]

On Sat, Oct 4, 2008 at 1:29 AM, jasper holmes <jasper.holmes at gmail.com> wrote:
> We are pleased to announce that the British Academic Written English
> (BAWE) corpus is now available to all researchers ...
> There are no restrictions on access to the corpus ...

Except that the UK Data Archive requires users to fill in a web form,
which leads to:

"Fax or post a signed copy of this form to: UK Data Archive,
University of Essex, Wivenhoe Park, Colchester, Essex, CO4 3SQ  Fax:
+44 (0) 1206 872003   Upon receipt of the signed form, we will create
an Athens account for you within three working days. You will then
receive an email and will be able to register with ESDS."

The Oxford Text Archive requires users to fill in a web form, which leads to:

"Thank you for requesting British Academic Written English Corpus.
Staff at the Oxford Text Archive need to approve your request before
granting you access to this resource."

These steps seem like overkill for a corpus which has generous
permissions: "Available for non-commercial use on condition that this
header is included in its entirety with any copy distributed."

It would be helpful if UKDA and OTA didn't impose these extra barriers
to access for such corpora.  I wonder what criteria they use in
approving an application.  It would also be helpful if they made a
sample of the data available so users could see if a corpus met their
needs before going through the application process.

-Steven Bird

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