Web-based text anonymization with Node.js: Introducing NETANOS (Named entity-based Text Anonymization for Open Science)

Bennett Kleinberg,Maximilian Mozes

doi:10.21105/joss.00293

Abstract

Kleinberg et al, (2017), Web-based text anonymization with Node.js: Introducing NETANOS (Named entity-based Text Anonymization for Open Science), Journal of Open Source Software, 2(14), 293, doi:10.21105/joss.00293

Highlights

Consider the example string “Max and Ben spent more than 1000 hours on writing the software
The key feature of NETANOS is that the anonymization preserves critical context that allows for secondary linguistic analyses on anonymized texts
They started in August 2016 in Amsterdam.”

Summary

Introduction

Consider the example string “Max and Ben spent more than 1000 hours on writing the software. Netanos (Named Entity-based Text ANonymization for Open Science) is a natural language processing software that anonymizes texts by identifying and replacing named entities. The key feature of NETANOS is that the anonymization preserves critical context that allows for secondary linguistic analyses on anonymized texts. They started in August 2016 in Amsterdam.” While coarse anonymization such as simple “XXX” replacement would suffice to mask the true content of the string, essential text properties are lost that are needed for secondary analyses.

Results

Conclusion