Academics have expressed shock at the publishers Taylor and Francis selling access to its authors' research to Microsoft for use in training AI in a deal which has been reported to be worth $10 million in its first year.
The deal with Microsoft by the publisher company was made in May last year. However, academics claim that they were not aware of it and accuse the company of a lack of transparency.
They also said that they were not given the option to opt out nor were they receiving extra payment for the use of their research, according to the website bookseller.
The Society of Authors said it is "concerned to see publishers signing deals with tech companies without consulting authors and creators first."
Dr Ruth Alison Clemens, a lecturer in modern English literature whose work has been published by Taylor & Francis and Routledge, told the bookseller, "I only found out about this via word of mouth in the past few days. I was shocked that they had not publicized this more widely to their authors, as the use of AI and LLMs is a prominent concern for academic researchers today."
Taylor & Francis, in its turn, said it is "protecting the integrity of our authors’ work and limits on verbatim text reproduction, as well as authors’ rights to receive royalty payments in accordance with their author contracts."
All the same, Clemens said that to her more shocking is the fact that there is apparently no opt-out provision available to the authors.
"There is no clarity from Taylor & Francis about whether an opt-out policy is in place or on the cards. But as they did not inform their authors about the deal in the first place, any opt-out policy is now not functional," she said.
"We are at a crossroads in the production and dissemination of research knowledge, and in my view, the biggest problem with this deal is the reduction of academic research into raw content from which data can be extracted and repackaged as knowledge," Clemens added.
Image Source: Unsplash
Comments