The Morisky Medical Adherence Scale: a case study in using flimsy copyright claims to inhibit research
For anyone who is a regular reader of Retraction Watch, few things are more frustrating than seeing research retracted over […]
Open? When Site Restrictions and Clauses Undermine Open Access
Open access publishing has transformed the way research circulates. In principle, open access means that anyone, anywhere, can read and reuse scholarly work without financial, legal, or technical barriers. But in practice, many works labeled as “open” are quietly constrained by restrictions that limit how they can be used, especially by machines.
Institutional Repositories and AI Scraping
We recently received a question regarding the AI scraping of Institutional Repositories, by which we mean online digital archives that
AI, Authorship, and the Public Interest Grant Recipients
We’re delighted to announce the five recipients of our AI, Authorship, and the Public Interest grant awards. Chosen from a competitive pool of over 160 proposals, these grantees stood out for their thoughtful, innovative projects that align closely with our research priorities and our mission to serve the public interest.
Authors Alliance Files Amicus Brief in Thomson Reuters v. Ross
Yesterday Authors Alliance filed an amicus brief in Thomson Reuters v. ROSS Intelligence, the long-running lawsuit between Thomson Reuters, owner of Westlaw (a legal research platform) and ROSS Intelligence, an AI-powered start up legal research platform.
Bartz v Anthropic Settlement Gets Preliminary Approval – Key Takeaways
On Thursday, Judge Alsup of the Northern District of California granted preliminary approval of a settlement in the class action
Beyond the Exception: Licensing, Access, and the Realities of Text and Data Mining in the US, UK, and Singapore
This is a post by Syn Ong, AI Policy Researcher at Authors Alliance. Authors increasingly rely on text and data mining (TDM) to analyze large corpora across disciplines. Our new working paper, Beyond the Exception: Licensing, Access, and the Realities of Text and Data Mining in the US, UK, and Singapore, finds that formal legal permissions alone do not secure usable access for TDM research. Instead, usable access turns on how statutory rules interact with private licenses, platform architectures, and technological protection measures (TPMs).
Are Copyright Anxiety and Legal Chill Hampering Your Work?
This is guest post by Amanda Wakaruk, Jane Secker, and Chris Morrison. Readers of this blog will know that authors are both users and creators of copyright-protected works. How confident are authors about their rights related to copyright? Is the fear of navigating copyright preventing non-infringing ‘user’ activities in higher education? What can we do to mitigate the damage to teaching and research caused by copyright anxiety and chill?
The Anthropic Settlement – what it is and isn’t (and who could get paid)
On Friday, both sides in the Bartz v. Anthropic lawsuit filed motions for the court to consider regarding preliminary approval of a settlement in the class action copyright infringement lawsuit filed against Anthropic last year by three book authors.
Bartz v. Anthropic: A Preliminary Look at What LibGen Books May Be Included in the Class Action
As readers are likely aware, the Bartz v. Anthropic AI lawsuit had a couple of major developments recently. Though the lawsuit was initially brought to address the legality of using copyrighted materials for training AI, the suit has now shifted its focus to Anthropic’s storage—without training use—of copies of books downloaded from LibGen and PiLiMi, two sites that share pirated copies of books and other materials.