Text analytics is the process of enabling data-driven research by extracting and analysing machine-readable information from within unstructured text. Due to the increasing availability of large amounts of unstructured text, techniques for their analysis are becoming increasingly important across research disciplines. This can take the form of extracting social and cultural information from texts in the humanities and social sciences to extracting machine-readable information from technical texts in engineering and the sciences to assist with developing hypotheses and projections.

Text analytics in research tends to happen at either a basic, generic level (handled with standard packages) or with custom code specifically developed for a particular project. The aim of the Australian Text Analytics Platform (ATAP) is to provide researchers with a toolset that is more powerful and customisable than those contained in the standard packages, while being accessible to a large number of researchers who do not have strong coding skills.

ATAP will transform and accelerate the data-driven research possibilities across disciplines by providing Australian researchers with access to an online platform for processing and analysing unstructured texts. The platform will include self-service training in text analytics techniques and promote greater flexibility and transparency in research workflows. This project aims to foster a community that brings together developers and users of text analytics in an accessible and collaborative environment.

This project is supported through the ARDC Research Platforms program.