|
|
Weekly News Digest
 |
March 13, 2025 — In addition to this week's NewsBreaks article and the monthly NewsLink Spotlight, Information Today, Inc. (ITI) offers Weekly News Digests that feature recent product news and company announcements. Watch for additional coverage to appear in the next print issue of Information Today.
CLICK HERE to view more Weekly News Digest items.
|
Law Library of Congress Makes CRS Products Searchable via Congress.gov
The Law Library of Congress’ blog, In Custodia Legis, shares, “We are pleased to announce the new Congressional Research Service (CRS) products collection that is searchable within Congress.gov. CRS products include coveted CRS reports, testimony by CRS analysts, infographics, and more. Find descriptions for each CRS product type on our About Congressional Research Service (CRS) Products page.”For more information, read the blog post.
CCC Readies an AI Systems Training License
CCC is introducing an AI Systems Training License later in 2025 for both existing and prospective CCC customers. This voluntary, non-exclusive license will help organizations—such as AI systems providers and developers of AI-powered applications—use copyrighted works lawfully when training AI systems with third-party content and when using certain outputs from trained models.“As a complement to direct licensing deals with rightsholders or as a standalone solution, CCC’s AI Systems Training License simplifies how organizations can legally obtain a consistent set of rights across a broad and growing repertory of works in publishing sectors such as science, technology, medicine, humanities, business, news and media,” CCC notes. For more information, read the press release.
Zendy Pioneers Ethical Model for Compensation Regarding AI-Cited Content
The Zendy research library introduced “a first-of-its-kind revenue-sharing model for AI-generated content, ensuring publishers are fairly compensated when their paywalled research is cited by AI.”The company shares, “ZAIA, Zendy’s domain-specific large language model (LLM), uses Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) to retrieve data from a diverse collection of open-access and paywalled metadata through licensing agreements with publishers. Based on reference generation by the LLM, the new revenue-sharing model enables a fair and sustainable approach to compensating academic publishers for the use of their content by AI. … The transparent revenue-sharing mechanism ensures fair compensation for publishers based on the number of references provided in ZAIA’s responses.” For more information, read the press release.
Clarivate Publishes Its 2025 Top 100 Global Innovators
Clarivate unveiled its annual list of the Top 100 Global Innovators, which features the organizations that are “at the forefront of technology research and innovation worldwide.” They come from 11 countries/regions; Japan has the most on the list, at 33, with the U.S. coming in second, at 18, and Taiwan coming in third, at 13.“The Top 100 organizations prioritize innovation as a central part of their business strategy. Their investment levels in science, engineering, product design and problem-solving is, on average, 8.8% of their revenues. Across the Top 100, this was almost $290 billion USD,” Clarivate reports. “Electronics and computing equipment continues to have the most Top 100 entities, followed by Semiconductors, Industrial systems, and Automotive.” For more information, read the press release.
OverDrive and Podium Partner for Audiobook Distribution
OverDrive entered into a global distribution partnership with audiobook publisher Podium that allows OverDrive to distribute Podium’s catalog to libraries and schools around the world and to be Podium’s exclusive partner for audiobook sales outside of the U.S. and Canada.“Podium Entertainment is an industry leader in science fiction, fantasy, and romance and is recognized for amplifying emerging and bestselling authors in digital-first publishing. Now, through OverDrive’s Marketplace, over 1,000 Podium audiobooks are available to libraries, with more titles expected to be added throughout 2025,” OverDrive shares. “In addition to fiction, Podium’s nonfiction catalog includes highly rated titles in history, health and fitness, psychology, and business and economics. These audiobooks are available in multiple lending models giving libraries flexible options to meet patron demand.” For more information, read the press release.
APA Develops a Guide to Fostering Healthy Video-Viewing Habits in Teens
The American Psychological Association (APA) created a caregiver resource, Healthy Video Viewing: A Guide for Parents of Teens, which “translates decades of psychological research on adolescent development into practical advice parents can use to understand the effects of different types of content and start conversations with their teens about their video viewing habits. The guide also addresses how parents can help teens navigate influencer content, AI-generated videos, and advertising that is integrated into video platforms.”The guide was supported by YouTube funding. “YouTube shares the APA’s dedication to support teens’ healthy development and well-being as they navigate today’s digital world,” says Garth Graham, global director for YouTube Health. “We hope this guide helps parents cut through the noise and incorporate evidence-based tips for managing screen time and building healthy digital habits with their teens.” For more information, read the press release.
Wiley to Help Train the European Space Agency's LLM
Wiley is providing “access to a curated collection of Earth science research materials to help enhance the training and capabilities of the European Space Agency’s Earth Virtual Expert (EVE). Wiley signed an agreement with Pi School, which is leading the development of the EVE project for ESA’s Φ-lab. EVE is a fine-tuned large language model designed to transform how researchers and the public access and engage with Earth Observation and Earth science research and information.”The EVE project will produce a virtual expert that will answer queries about “Earth Observation” and Earth science in natural language by learning from a collection of Wiley’s published research, including scientific journals, books, and Q&A courseware materials. Qualified researchers can register to take part in the EVE project pilot, which will be led by 200 experts from the European Space Agency. For more information, read the press release.
Studies Find That AI Chatbots Are Not Good News Sources
Klaudia Jazwinska and Aisvarya Chandrasekar write for Columbia Journalism Review that “while traditional search engines typically operate as an intermediary, guiding users to news websites and other quality content, generative search tools parse and repackage information themselves, cutting off traffic flow to original sources. These chatbots’ conversational outputs often obfuscate serious underlying issues with information quality. There is an urgent need to evaluate how these systems access, present, and cite news content.” The authors tested eight generative AI search tools and found (in part) that:- Chatbots were generally bad at declining to answer questions they couldn’t answer accurately, offering incorrect or speculative answers instead.
- Premium chatbots provided more confidently incorrect answers than their free counterparts.
- Multiple chatbots seemed to bypass Robot Exclusion Protocol preferences.
- Generative search tools fabricated links and cited syndicated and copied versions of articles.
- Content licensing deals with news sources provided no guarantee of accurate citation in chatbot responses.
In February, the BBC released research that “provides a warning around the use of AI assistants to answer questions about news, with factual errors and the misrepresentation of source material affecting AI assistants.” These findings include: - 51% of all AI answers to questions about the news were judged to have significant issues of some form
- 19% of AI answers which cited BBC content introduced factual errors—incorrect factual statements, numbers and dates
- 13% of the quotes sourced from BBC articles were either altered or didn’t actually exist in that article.
In Information Today, ITI NewsBreaks’ print counterpart, Database Review columnist Mick O’Leary has been analyzing AI search tools. Check out “The AI Web Search Fray” in the March/April 2025 issue, and his other recent tests, including AI Overviews: An AI Chatbot on the Internet’s Front Page” from the September 2024 issue and “Claude and the Pursuit of AI Safety” from the April 2024 issue.
GetFTR Increases Its Support for Perpetual Rights When Journals Move Publishers
GetFTR updated “its entitlements checking service to better support perpetual rights, ensuring uninterrupted access to journal content even after a publisher has transferred a journal. This update benefits both researchers and publishers by recognizing perpetual rights both from a licensing perspective and when journals change publishers.” GetFTR now makes sure that entitlement requests are sent to both the current publisher and the previous publisher hosting the journal, allowing researchers to continue accessing content available to them via their institution’s subscription and content they have perpetual rights to if their institution no longer subscribes.For more information, read the blog post.
OpenAI Creates the NextGenAI Consortium With 15 Research Institutions
OpenAI launched the NextGenAI consortium with 15 research institutions around the world. This consortium is “dedicated to using AI to accelerate research breakthroughs and transform education” and “aims to catalyze progress at a rate faster than any one institution would alone. This initiative is built not only to fuel the next generation of discoveries, but also to prepare the next generation to shape AI’s future.”OpenAI is committing $50 million in research grants, compute funding, and API access for academic advancement. The NextGenAI founding partners besides OpenAI are Caltech, the California State University system, Duke University, the University of Georgia, Harvard University, Howard University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Michigan, the University of Mississippi, Ohio State University, the University of Oxford, Sciences Po, Texas A&M University, Boston Children’s Hospital, and Boston Public Library. “Each institution is using AI to tackle high-impact challenges, from revolutionizing healthcare to reimagining education,” OpenAI states. For more information, read the news item.
Send correspondence concerning the Weekly News Digest to NewsBreaks Editor
Brandi Scardilli
|
