Oxford University Press has become the latest academic publisher to confirm it is working with companies developing AI tools.
“We are actively working with companies developing large language models (LLMs) to explore options for both their responsible development and usage,” OUP told The Bookseller, a U.K.-based outlet covering the publishing industry. “This is not only to improve research outcomes, but to champion the vital role that researchers have in an AI-enabled world.”
While it didn’t offer any more detail, in its annual report the publisher said last month that it has “pursued opportunities relating to artificial intelligence (AI) technologies with careful consideration of its implications for research and education.”
Both Informa, the parent company of academic publisher Taylor & Francis, and Wiley recently announced that they had entered into data-access agreements with various companies, including Microsoft, that want to use their corpora to train proprietary AI tools. The Taylor & Francis deal sparked online outrage among academics who said they weren’t notified about the sale of their copyrighted data and weren’t given the option to opt out.
The Bookseller said it reached out to other academic publishers about their intent to sell author data to AI companies.
Cambridge University Press said it hasn’t made any deals yet but pledged to “put authors’ interests and desires first, before allowing their work to be licensed for GenAI,” laying out guidelines for achieving that. “Where Cambridge-published content is used, it must be properly attributed, licensed, founded on permissions and with fair remuneration for both authors and publishers.”
Pearson declined to comment, and Pan Macmillan, Hachette and HarperCollins said they hadn’t made any AI deals to date. “If we were to reach an agreement to do so,” a HarperCollins spokesperson told The Bookseller, “we would provide authors the option of whether or not to participate.”
