AI & Scholarly Publishing

Wondering how artificial intelligence (AI) may be interacting with your scholarly work that's available online? Read on to learn more.

 

What Researchers Should Know About AI and Scholarly Publishing

If your scholarly work is available online, it may already have been accessed by automated systems, including web crawlers and AI training bots. This type of access is not unique to artificial intelligence. Search engines, citation indexes, preservation services, and other tools have long collected publicly available scholarly content – our modern online world cannot function without this kind of collection and indexing of metadata. Today, some AI developers also gather online materials to train large language models and other AI systems. 

Uncertainty in the Current Legal Landscape

The details of how publishers, repositories, and AI companies use scholarly content continue to evolve, and legal and policy questions are still being decided. In a space that is sometimes hotly debated, it is important to separate facts from speculation. For example, many are under the impression that Anthropic lost its claim of fair use in its copyright infringement lawsuit, but in fact, Judge Alsup found “the use of the [legally acquired] books at issue to train Claude and its precursors was exceedingly transformative and was a fair use under Section 107 of the Copyright Act” (Bartz et al. v. Anthropic, Order on Fair Use [PDF], 2025, p. 9). Anthropic’s use of pirated digital copies of published works was the reason they had to pay a $1.5 billion settlement. More than 100 lawsuits involving AI companies and copyright are currently in process, and it may be many years before a robust body of case law guidance is available. 

Implications of Sharing Your Work Online

In general, not every scholarly article is automatically used to train AI models, and the presence of a work online does not necessarily mean it can be freely reused without limits. If you have shared your published work online, it’s important to consider the potential consequences of limiting access to your scholarship. Making research difficult to discover can reduce its visibility, readership, citation potential, and societal impact. In contrast, openly sharing scholarly works through trusted repositories and publishing platforms helps ensure that scholars, students, practitioners, policymakers, and the public can find, use, and build upon new knowledge. The same visibility that enables AI systems to find scholarly content also enables human readers to discover, engage with, and benefit from your work. 

You can take practical steps to stay informed and make thoughtful decisions about sharing your work. Before signing a publishing agreement, review provisions related to copyright, reuse, text and data mining, and AI. Consider retaining key rights when possible, deposit eligible versions of your work in trusted repositories such as OpenEmory, and familiarize yourself with your publisher's policies regarding AI and content reuse.

The Scholarly Communications Office at Emory Libraries can help. Explore our resources on Open Access and Publishing, learn about Emory's Open Access Repositories and Policy, and share your scholarly work through OpenEmory. Emory Libraries can also provide guidance on copyright, publishing agreements and author rights, and emerging issues involving AI and scholarly communication. Email us with your questions or schedule a consultation with one of our experts.

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