This study introduces RheumaLinguisticpack (RheumaLpack), the first specialised linguistic web corpus designed for the field of musculoskeletal disorders. By combining web mining (i.e., web scraping) and natural language processing (NLP) techniques, as well as clinical expertise, RheumaLpack systematically captures and curates data across a spectrum of web sources including clinical trials registers (i.e., ClinicalTrials.gov), bibliographic databases (i.e., PubMed), medical agencies (i.e. EMA), social media (i.e., Reddit), and accredited health websites (i.e., MedlinePlus, Hardvard Health Publishing, and Cleveland Clinic). Given the complexity of rheumatic and musculoskeletal diseases (RMDs) and their significant impact on quality of life, this resource can be proposed as a useful tool to train algorithms that could mitigate the diseases' effects. Therefore, the corpus aims to improve the training of artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms and facilitate knowledge discovery in RMDs. The development of RheumaLpack involved a systematic six-step methodology covering data identification, characterisation, selection, collection, processing, and corpus description. The result is a non-annotated, monolingual, and dynamic corpus, featuring almost 3 million records spanning from 2000 to 2023. RheumaLpack represents a pioneering contribution to rheumatology research, providing a useful resource for the development of advanced AI and NLP applications. This corpus highlights the value of web data to address the challenges posed by musculoskeletal diseases, illustrating the corpus's potential to improve research and treatment paradigms in rheumatology. Finally, the methodology shown can be replicated to obtain data from other medical specialities.

The authors have declared no competing interest.

This study did not receive any funding

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I understand that all clinical trials and any other prospective interventional studies must be registered with an ICMJE-approved registry, such as ClinicalTrials.gov. I confirm that any such study reported in the manuscript has been registered and the trial registration ID is provided (note: if posting a prospective study registered retrospectively, please provide a statement in the trial ID field explaining why the study was not registered in advance).

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Raw data from RheumaLpack is not available as these data may be protected by copyright. However, all the code developed for building the corpus, along with instructions on how to use it, is provided on request.