Objective
ELRA has been set up to boost language systems and services in Europe by facilitating access to language knowledge and data. To this end, it will act as a central broker between producers and users of language resources, providing the means to identify, process, distribute and exploit them. Speech and text, basic data, linguistic models and software tools will all be targeted. ELRA will establish a central distribution unit, expert panels to assist in data handling and other tasks and a validation network. It will also highlight the benefits of greater resources availability, and develop evaluation guidelines and licensing agreements.
Progress
In the first year the association has succeeded in:
- establishing the necessary infrastructure (expert panels, offices and a limited company the 'ELRA distribution agency - ELDA'),
- preparing a variety of viable and legally valid contract specifications for resource suppliers and users, taking into account potential IPR problems,
- identifying and establishing links with a range of resource suppliers and acquired resources for distribution,
- producing a catalogue of available existing language resources, and several issues of a newsletter,
- establishing a pricing policy for resources,
- establishing an extensive membership of the association, including academic, R&D and commercial organisations.
Two of the main indicators of the association's success to date are the language resources catalogue and the association's membership.
Newsletters and Catalogues
The ELRA Catalogue is published twice a year, in English and French with additional updates in the quarterly ELRA Newsletter (both of these publications are also available on the web).
The Newsletter includes news about the association, resources production and usage, and articles concerning language engineering projects, conferences, exhibitions, vendors and services.
The Catalogue provides an up to date list of the resources available from ELRA. For each new resource a concise description is given of its source, coverage, languages and format. The catalogue currently lists over 400 resources:
34 speech resources
46 text resources
>360 terminology resources
2 platforms, tool sets
Pricing of resources has been a major area of work for the association. The resource providers could estimate the cost, often very high, of developing their resources, but had little idea of their real market worth.
The ELRA pricing scheme is sensitive to the value of each resource. Members pay an annual membership fee and per resource they receive, but prices for members are most favourable and further reduced for research and non-profit making organisations. The pricing scheme allows for, resources to be distributed at cost, in the case of publicly funded or donated resources, a provider driven pricing with appropriate sale price and royalties, and, takes into account the cost of other resources already marketed.
The association has now established a wide network of providers, and agreements to acquire and make available further resources are underway.
Addressing Legal Issues
As a basic issue ELRA faced the problems of establishing viable contractual schemata and dealing with the range of problems stemming from IPR and ownership rights of resource providers. A survey of the area covered patenting, trade marks, industrial property rights, copyrights and legislative issues such as data protection. All of these 'rights' are protective of the supplier but also negative in preventing others from exploiting the resources. This in turn may be seen as a barrier for the supplier in exploiting resources through their sale and royalties.
With the advice of legal experts in the field, ELRA has identified a need for three different types of agreement and has drawn up draft contractual agreements which can be used in specific instances. The ELRA licensing model calls for:
- end-user agreements, between ELRA and direct end-users of resources,
- distribution agreements, with owners and providers of resources to ELRA
- VAR agreements, between ELRA and organisations which supply resources to end users with some added value, such as embedding in an application.
The agreement service provided by ELRA has to be flexible to account for the different potential use of resources and interests of the parties. The distribution agreement lists a large number of items and sample formulations for provisions that may be of relevance to many, if not most, agreements on the preparation, revision, processing, conversion, exchange, production and marketing of terminological data. Where a more simple agreement is required, irrelevant items may simply be omitted.
Membership
ELRA membership is divided across the three 'colleges' of spoken, terminology and written resources. The current membership of ELRA numbers some 70 organisations with a balance between academic and commercial organisations and across European states and language interests.
In addition the association has established and is negotiating a number of agreements with other organisations and their members.
The Way Ahead
The association is thus now able to provide both resource providers and consumers with excellent support for commercialisation and access to resources.
In the future work will continue in gaining new resources for the association and refining solutions to legal issues. However, the focus of effort is to shift away from those of the past (establishing infrastructure, resource gathering and membership) toward distribution and active marketing of resources.
In addition the association will initiate its planned programme to validate and quality control the resources being distributed.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
- natural sciences computer and information sciences software
- natural sciences computer and information sciences computer security data protection
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Programme(s)
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
Topic(s)
Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Call for proposal
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
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Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
Funding Scheme
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
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Coordinator
75013 Paris
France
The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.