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Text and Data Mining (T&DM) policy

Version dated July 2026. 

IOP Publishing Limited (“IOP Publishing/we”) recognise the importance of allowing researchers access to the metadata, full text and supplementary data of our content.  These data sources are a key resource in the research process.  We understand that researchers are becoming increasingly interested in mining the text and data included within that content and using it for AI purposes.

To ensure that the research community can access content without undue interruption or delay, and also to ensure that we provide agreed contractual levels of availability to our subscribers, our IOPscience platform blocks systematic downloading of content through a variety of methods.

Researchers seeking to obtain large amounts of data for AI and/or T&DM are asked to contact us (contentsupport@ioppublishing.org).  Subject to our review of the proposed use and any applicable terms, we may provide the requested content via SFTP or another agreed method.  In addition, to protect our investment, and the investment of the authors in our publications, the response to any request, and the terms and conditions governing any future use, will depend on the content to be mined and the purposes for which the AI and/or T&DM is being carried out.

IOP Publishing reserves the right to charge a nominal fee for supplying data such as full-text XML and PDF files for AI and/or T&DM purposes.  We do not charge for the supply of XML metadata, which includes only header, author, abstract and reference information.  Any AI and/or T&DM use of such metadata under this policy is permitted only for non-commercial purposes unless otherwise agreed in writing by IOP Publishing.

“Outputs” means the results of authorised AI and/or T&DM activities, excluding copies or substitute versions of the Publications.

These terms and conditions apply to both subscription content and open access content made available by IOP Publishing for AI and/or T&DM purposes, except to the extent that a Creative Commons licence or separate written agreement with IOP Publishing grants different rights, in which case those terms shall prevail.

Articles published under the Subscription model

IOP Publishing allows researchers access to our articles published under the subscription model on IOPscience for the purposes of non-commercial AI and/or T&DM, provided they, or their affiliated institution, have a valid subscription which provides them with access to all the content they wish to use for AI and/or T&DM.

Where access to content is governed by a current licence or other written agreement with IOP Publishing that contains AI and/or T&DM provisions, those contractual terms shall exclusively govern the relevant AI and/or T&DM activities and shall prevail over this policy to the extent of any inconsistency.

To avoid being blocked by the technical protections set up to prevent unauthorised systematic downloading of website content, individuals wishing to use content for AI and/or T&DM must email contentsupport@ioppublishing.org confirming:

  • their full name and contact details;
  • the name of any licensed institution to which they are affiliated;
  • details of the articles that they wish to use for AI and/or T&DM.  This can be specified as a list of DOIs, or as ranges of article publication dates within specific content;
  • the format in which they want to receive the content (XML or PDF).  Almost all articles have PDFs.  We have full-text XML for most recent articles but this is not available for some journals, such as Conference Series journals, or for many older articles.  You can tell whether an article has full-text XML by viewing the article page on IOPscience: if full-text XML is available for an article, the full text is visible in HTML form on the article page.  Where full-text XML is not available, XML contains only metadata/abstracts/references;
  • the approximate length of time that they want to have access to the data to carry out the AI and/or T&DM; and
  • the purpose for which they want to use the content for AI and/or T&DM. 

AI and/or T&DM for commercial purposes is not permitted unless expressly agreed in writing by IOP Publishing.

Articles published under the gold open access model

All use of articles or journals published under the gold open access model for AI and/or T&DM will be governed by the terms of the Creative Commons licence relating to the relevant article.

If the content you wish to use for AI and/or T&DM was published under the gold open access model under a CC BY licence, you have the right to use the content for AI and/or TDM purposes for both commercial and non-commercial usage, in accordance with the licence terms.

If the content you wish to use for AI and/or T&DM was published under any other Creative Commons licence, you have the right to use the content of the article for non-commercial AI and/or T&DM purposes only, in accordance with the licence terms.

Again, to avoid being blocked by the technical protections set up to prevent unauthorised systematic downloading of website content, individuals wishing to use content for AI and/or T&DM purposes must email contentsupport@ioppublishing.org confirming:

  • their full name and contact details;
  • the name of any licensed institution/organisation to which they are affiliated;
  • details of the content that they wish to use for AI and/or T&DM.  This can be specified as a list of DOIs, or as ranges of article publication dates within specific journals;
  • the format in which they want to receive the content (XML or PDF).   Almost all articles have PDFs.  We have full-text XML for most recent articles, but this is not available for some journals such as Conference Series journals, or for many older articles.  You can tell whether an article has full-text XML by viewing the article page on IOPscience: if full-text XML is available for an article, the full text is visible in HTML form on the article page.  Where full-text XML is not available, XML contains only metadata/abstracts/references; 
  • the approximate length of time that they want to have access to the data to carry out the T&DM; and 
  • the purpose for which they want to T&DM. 

IOP Publishing Terms and conditions for AI and T&DM 

These terms and conditions shall be deemed to be accepted by anyone granted access to content published by us or our licensors for AI and/or T&DM purposes.  They are in addition to any terms included in a separate licence.  Where access to the Publications is governed by an institutional licence or other written agreement with IOP Publishing that includes AI and/or T&DM rights, the terms of that agreement shall prevail in the event of any inconsistency.

  1. The Publications are made available “as is” and without warranty of fitting the description of the publications in the metadata or otherwise and/or any warranty of fitness for purpose, satisfactory quality, reliability and/or completeness.
  2. AI and/or T&DM of subscription content is permitted only for non-commercial scientific research, private study, scholarship, teaching and educational purposes.  Users must not use the Publications, Outputs or any systems derived from them for commercial purposes, provide services to third parties, create competing products or services, or develop, train or improve commercial AI products or services unless expressly agreed in writing by IOP Publishing;
  3. Users must not:
    • 3.1 systematically extract the Publications in order to create products or services for third parties;
    • 3.2 use AI and/or T&DM tools that make any part of the Publications accessible to unauthorised third parties;
    • 3.3 use Outputs to enhance repositories or services in a manner that competes with or substitutes for IOP Publishing products, services or peer-reviewed publications;
    • 3.4 substantially reproduce, retain or redistribute the Publications; and/or
    • 3.5 use automated tools to search, scrape, extract, deep-link, index or disrupt the Publications except as expressly authorised by IOP Publishing;
  4. Users must not use the Publications to train, pre-train, fine-tune, adapt, evaluate, benchmark or improve any artificial intelligence model, machine learning model, foundation model, large language model or similar system, except where strictly necessary for permitted non-commercial research, private study, scholarship, teaching or educational purposes and otherwise authorised by applicable licence terms;
  5. Except where expressly permitted under a current licence or separate written agreement with IOP Publishing, access to the Publications does not include any right to create or populate embeddings, vector databases, knowledge graphs, retrieval systems, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) systems, agentic systems or similar machine-accessible resources derived from the Publications;
  6. Access to the Publications does not include any entitlement to receive, access, use or make available the Publications through APIs, machine-readable feeds, structured data feeds, XML delivery services, MCP servers, MCP connectors, automated software agents, autonomous workflows or other machine-to-machine access methods.  Any such access requires a separate written agreement with IOP Publishing and may be subject to additional fees;
  7. Subject to these terms and any applicable licence, users may use Outputs generated through authorised AI and/or T&DM activities solely for non-commercial scientific research, private study, scholarship, teaching and educational purposes.  Any database rights created as a result of authorised AI and/or T&DM activities shall belong to the user that created them.  Outputs must not constitute copies, substitute versions or substantial reproductions of the Publications;
  8. Mined text and/or data must include a link to the DOI of the original article wherever practicable;
  9. IOP Publishing reserves the right to require a separate written agreement governing AI and/or T&DM activities, including, but not limited to, technical, operational, security, audit, authentication, rate-limiting, hosting environment and machine-access provisions.  Access to content for AI and/or T&DM purposes may be refused or conditioned where such requirements are not satisfied; and
  10. Files supplied by IOP Publishing for AI and/or T&DM purposes must be kept secure, must not be redistributed, and may only be retained while the user has a valid licence or lawful access right to the relevant Publications.  Authorised permissions cease when the applicable licence or subscription ends, except to the extent continued access rights apply.

Content we publish is © 2026 IOP Publishing Ltd and/or its licensors.  All rights not expressly granted are reserved.  Subject to applicable licences and agreements, limited rights to undertake AI and text and data mining activities for non-commercial research, private study, scholarship, teaching and educational purposes may be granted by IOP Publishing.  No rights are granted to commercialise publications, outputs or systems derived from them without IOP Publishing’s prior written consent.