Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Kathy Bowrey @kathybowrey.bsky.social · 2h

“When it comes to responsible AI use, there are, at best, many conflicting positions. Equating responsibility with disclosing genAI use conceals, in fact, several fundamental questions concerning the responsibilities that academics have to their disciplines, each other, and society at large.”

Iris van Rooij 💭 @irisvanrooij.bsky.social · 1d

“The delegation of tasks to “tools & assistants” constitutes a methodological decision (…) Researchers should therefore be required to explain why they are trusting a black box that is neither open nor fair.”
— @altibel.bsky.social & @petertarras.bsky.social

www.leidenmadtrics.nl/articles/why...

Why AI transparency is not enough

Recently, a taxonomy to disclose the use of generative AI (genAI) in research outputs was presented as an approach that creates transparency and thereby supports responsible genAI use. In this post we...

www.leidenmadtrics.nl

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Reposted by Kathy Bowrey

Int Society for the History & Theory of Intellectual Property @ishtip.bsky.social · Aug 20

We are very pleased to announce the 2025/6 ISHTIP Online Seminar Series, which brings together scholars from around the world who explore intellectual property issues from theoretical and historical angles.

Please find below the programme, dates for your diary, registration links ⬇️

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Reposted by Kathy Bowrey

Int Society for the History & Theory of Intellectual Property @ishtip.bsky.social · 17h

The first in the seminar series is coming up next week.

You can register for a zoom link here👇

We look forward to seeing many of you online!

Int Society for the History & Theory of Intellectual Property @ishtip.bsky.social · Aug 20

Date: Wednesday 22 October 2025 | Time: 3.00pm (London – BST)

After Patent Republic

Speaker: Hyo Yoon Kang

After Patent Republic – Hyo Yoon Kang (University of Warwick) – ISHTIP

ishtip.org

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Reposted by Kathy Bowrey

Margot Finn @eicathomefinn.bsky.social · 17h

'Drawing on...more than 3,000 researchers globally the Publishing Futures report, released on 16 October by Cambridge University Press, found 53 per cent of respondents believe AI would negatively impact the research publishing system while 18 per cent feel it would improve academic publishing.' 1/2

Low-quality and AI-generated papers ‘could overwhelm publishing’

Survey of more than 3,000 researchers by Cambridge University Press reveals widespread concerns over the rise of ChatGPT-assisted papers

www.timeshighereducation.com

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Reposted by Kathy Bowrey

Marin Dacos @marind.bsky.social · 9d

Finland Now Has a National Roadmap for Open Science and Research Funding avointiede.fi/en/news/finl...

Finland Now Has a National Roadmap for Open Science and Research Funding

avointiede.fi

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Kathy Bowrey @kathybowrey.bsky.social · 10d

How many commodities can you make from one academic article?

Danny Kingsley @dannykay68.bsky.social · 10d

INNOVATIVE: "The AAS calculates article publication charges using an approach that counts “digital quanta”, units of information in digital form that the author supplies. Digital quanta can include words, figures, tables, data components, and figure set." journals.aas.org/article-char...

Article Publication Charges and Licensing Agreements - AAS Journals

journals.aas.org

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Kathy Bowrey @kathybowrey.bsky.social · 12d

The EDUC manual, Training the Algorithm, referred to in this post is excellent

Electronic Frontier Foundation @eff.org · 12d

The new Platform Work Directive gives workers the right to challenge automated decision-making, to peer inside the algorithms used, to speak to a responsible human about disputes, and to have their privacy and other fundamental rights protected on the job. www.eff.org/deeplinks/2...

What Europe’s New Gig Work Law Means for Unions and Technology

At EFF, we believe that tech rights are worker’s rights. Since the pandemic, workers of all kinds have been subjected to increasingly invasive forms of bossware. These are the “algorithmic

www.eff.org

Reposted by Kathy Bowrey

Oliver Bown @olliebown.bsky.social · 14d

Music indies sound the alarm bells!! So called "attribution technology" will be nothing like the world of streaming or record sales where a successful artist can track their popularity. It will be a murky tech-metricocracy that will benefit those with the most compute.

www.ft.com/content/1a1a...

Music labels close to landmark AI licensing deals

Universal and Warner seek payment structure similar to streaming as more disruption looms

www.ft.com

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Reposted by Kathy Bowrey

Hyo Yoon Kang 강효윤 @hyoyoonkang.bsky.social · 17d

I'm giving a talk on "After Patent Republic?"
on 22 October, 3pm GMT, online,
in which I'll think about the role of patent law in non-democratic and authoritarian polities.

It's part of @ishtip.bsky.social's 2025-6 Seminar Series.

Everyone welcome.

Abstract and registration:

Welcome! You are invited to join a meeting: After Patent Republic - Hyo Yoon Kang. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email about joining the meeting.

What comes after ‘Patent Republic’? In his 2006 article, Mario Biagioli showed how the modern U.S. patent law system, with its development of examination, filing, and institutional bureaucracy, was cl...

uqz.zoom.us

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Kathy Bowrey @kathybowrey.bsky.social · 18d

“when the rhetoric stops short of articulating how and what is different about what we are seeing with the aid of computer vision and why it matters, then all we have are slogans in support of computer vision itself.”

Amanda Levendowski Tepski @tepski.tech · 18d

www.artforum.com/features/gen...

MACHINE YEARNING

Sonja Drimmer critically examines art historians’ recent embrace of generative AI as a tool for humanities research.

www.artforum.com

Reposted by Kathy Bowrey

nano_entity @nanoentity.bsky.social · 19d

Todays best echidna… it’s a small juvenile that was scuttling about on the side of the road.

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Kathy Bowrey @kathybowrey.bsky.social · 23d

“Critics say automatic subscriptions to online course materials are a commercial cash grab that limits students’ choices”. Fun fact: In Australia students who can’t afford to rent, sometimes can’t use the library e-book in exams due to licence restrictions.
universityaffairs.ca/features/dig...

Digital textbook deals spark controversy - University Affairs

Critics say automatic subscriptions to online course materials are a commercial cash grab that limits students’ choices

universityaffairs.ca

Reposted by Kathy Bowrey

Danny Kingsley @dannykay68.bsky.social · 23d

I mean, that quote seems to indicate that Clarivate has no agency in the embedding. These tools are being actively added to products by without the option of turning them off. Here's a thought. Maybe get the products right before releasing them like an untested virus into the scholarly environment?

Danny Kingsley @dannykay68.bsky.social · 23d

MAYBE DON'T FORCE THEM ON US? "Yet, as these tools become embedded in scholarly workflows, the segment faces a complex challenge: how do we balance responsible AI use and the prevention of harmful outputs with the need to preserve academic freedom & research integrity?" clarivate.com/academia-gov...

Guardrails for Responsible AI

Clarivate on AI guardrails: balancing responsible AI, safety, and academic freedom through shared standards and community collaboration.

clarivate.com

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Reposted by Kathy Bowrey

Danny Kingsley @dannykay68.bsky.social · 24d

REFERENCE to the Principles of Open Scholarly Infrastructure (POSI) by @oapenbooks.bsky.social Niels Stern at #OASPA2025 open book panel - using as a mechanism for structuring the panel discussion around Introductions, Governance, Impact & Quality and Sustainability openscholarlyinfrastructure.org

The Principles of Open Scholarly Infrastructure (v1.1, 2023)

Final draft POSI 2.0 revisions - A request for public comment on the final draft of revisions to POSI The POSI Adopters are requesting feedback on the final draft of revisions to POSI with a deadline...

openscholarlyinfrastructure.org

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Reposted by Kathy Bowrey

Danny Kingsley @dannykay68.bsky.social · 24d

MISERABLE GHOSTS - bloody university rankings follow everything around like a bad smell

Carl T. Bergstrom @carlbergstrom.com · 24d

Yet again, machine learning — even gussied up via the transformer architecture — encodes and reinforces societal biases.

This study reveals that LLM-based peer review relies heavily on author institution in its decisions.

arxiv.org/abs/2509.15122

Prestige over merit: An adapted audit of LLM bias in peer review

Large language models (LLMs) are playing an increasingly integral, though largely informal, role in scholarly peer review. Yet it remains unclear whether LLMs reproduce the biases observed in human de...

arxiv.org

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Kathy Bowrey @kathybowrey.bsky.social · 28d

www.bloodinthemachine.com/p/how-ai-is-...

AI Killed My Job: Tech workers

Tech workers at TikTok, Google, and across the industry share stories about how AI is changing, ruining, or replacing their jobs.

www.bloodinthemachine.com

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Kathy Bowrey @kathybowrey.bsky.social · Sep 11

“AI isn’t magic; it’s a pyramid scheme of human labor,” said Adio Dinika, a researcher at the Distributed AI Research Institute based in Bremen, Germany. “These raters are the middle rung: invisible, essential and expendable.”
www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

How thousands of ‘overworked, underpaid’ humans train Google’s AI to seem smart

Contracted AI raters describe grueling deadlines, poor pay and opacity around work to make chatbots intelligent

www.theguardian.com

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Reposted by Kathy Bowrey

Danny Kingsley @dannykay68.bsky.social · Sep 8

UPDATED: Retracted guidelines from COPE now updated to include what to do with AI issues publicationethics.org/guidance/gui...

Retraction guidelines

Essential guidance for editors on when and how to retract articles, including the content of retraction notices, timing, and handling inconclusive evidence. Version 3 released in 2025!

publicationethics.org

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Reposted by Kathy Bowrey

Amanda Levendowski Tepski @tepski.tech · Sep 8

www.e-flux.com/architecture...

Intensification - Kate Crawford - Eating the Future: The Metabolic Logic of AI Slop

AI slop isn’t invested in the order of events or even looking like reality. The slop is not the territory: it just smothers it in synthetic goop. It’s flooding the zone with AI shit.

www.e-flux.com

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Reposted by Kathy Bowrey

Danny Kingsley @dannykay68.bsky.social · Sep 8

STATEMENT: Time to stop the undermining of library rights: IFLA statement on contract override www.ifla.org/news/time-to...
The Statement ... calls on governments to protect limitations and exceptions ... & look at how to ensure libraries benefit from effective protections against unfair contracts

Time to stop the undermining of library rights: IFLA statement on contract override

IFLA’s Governing Board has approved a new statement prepared by IFLA’s Advisory Committee on Copyright and other Legal Matters. This sets out the risk of licensing practices fo...

www.ifla.org

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Reposted by Kathy Bowrey

Ben Williamson @benpatrickwill.bsky.social · Sep 7

In our last editorial we imagined how bad academic publishing might get, and hopefully how it might come out better www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Near future academic publishing – a speculative social science fiction experiment

Published in Learning, Media and Technology (Vol. 49, No. 4, 2024)

www.tandfonline.com

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Reposted by Kathy Bowrey

Tressie McMillan Cottom @tressiemcphd.bsky.social · Sep 6

My publisher let me know and you know what? Hell yeah.

Sarah Fackrell @design-law.bsky.social · Sep 6

Under U.S. law, a copyright owner may elect to recover an award of statutory damages in the amount of $750-30,000 ("as the court considers just") per infringed work.

If the infringement is willful, the court can award up to $150,000 in statutory damages per work.

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Kathy Bowrey @kathybowrey.bsky.social · Sep 6

What is becoming more common is T&Cs shifting liability downstream. Upstream parties may have litigation insurance. End users never do. Eg. Composer is party responsible

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Kathy Bowrey @kathybowrey.bsky.social · Sep 5

“An ad blocker installed in a browser, Springer maintained, infringed on its copyright by modifying that Web page program without permission”.
Hmm-modifying a copyright work needs permission? Let’s turn that around, when Springer produce AI generated versions of academic work.

Glyn Moody @glynmoody.bsky.social · Sep 5

Top German court says maybe the Web should be more like television in order to protect #copyright - walledculture.org/top-german-c... how about no? #adblocker

Top German court says maybe the Web should be more like television in order to protect copyright

<p>Back in 2022, Walled Culture wrote about a legal case involving ad blockers. These are hugely popular programs: according to recent statistics, around one billion people use ad blockers when they a...

walledculture.org

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Reposted by Kathy Bowrey

Samuel Moore @samuelmoore.org · Sep 5

'Wiley executed a “landmark" $20 million AI licensing project with a large tech company that included content from other publishers and also struck a “strategic partnership with Anthropic to accelerate AI integration across scholarly research."'

Afraid this will only encourage them further.

Wiley Touts AI Strengths in First Quarter Report

The publisher said it had executed a “landmark AI licensing project with a large tech company” and struck a “strategic partnership with Anthropic” in the period, reported $29 million in AI licensing r...

www.publishersweekly.com

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