The data in the Corpus & Repository of Writing represent a valuable resource for research in writing studies. Some of these data are private and not available to the general public. Please take the agreement and conditions of use described below seriously and respect the user agreement.

Currently available access levels (web interface) 

  • Standard access supports full search capability on all student texts and instructor materials. Excerpts of student texts are shown.
  • Full text access provides the ability to see the full text of student writing. Additional justification and verification will be required.
  • Exporting search excerpt results supports research by allowing excerpted search results to be exported to a spreadsheet (similar to concordance line output). Additional justification and verification will be required.

Researchers can also request corpus download access. This option is intended for users who would like to use the corpus for their own research, particularly if they would like to annotate the corpus, use concordancing software (e.g., Antconc or LancsBox), or create their own programs to analyze the data. The offline corpus has been curated by the Crow team to ensure a representative sample from the first year writing context. Additional training and verification is required.

Staff will evaluate the requested access level to determine eligibility. Our determination regarding your access request will then be emailed to the address you provide, and will include details about the access level you have been granted.

I understand that by acknowledging that I have read this agreement to have access to the Crow corpus and repository, I am agreeing to the following:

  1. Crow corpora can not be used for commercial purposes.
  2. I will not download full texts from the Crow web interface for research purposes.
  3. Instructors may download limited texts (no more than 10 per assignment) for pedagogical purposes (non-commercial).
  4. I will not redistribute any texts from the Crow corpora except as outlined above.
  5. I will not share my Crow username and password with anyone.
  6. I can only use excerpts of up to 40 words of running text in publications.
  7. If using the downloaded corpus, I will follow the terms and conditions outlined in the video “Using Crow and MACAWS Offline Corpora.”
  8. Any published research which relies on Crow corpora should include a citation, e.g.:
    1. Staples, S., & Dilger, B. (2018-). Corpus and repository of writing [Learner corpus articulated with repository]. Available at https://crow.corporaproject.org
    2. This includes workshops, conference presentations, and other media.


Your access will expire on the date you indicate unless you request an extension. This agreement does not apply to Crow system code distributed via GitHub (https://github.com/writecrow); that is available via the MIT License.

This document was last updated on August 4, 2022. 

Path
terms-and-conditions