What should you do if your academic publishers asks you to license a monograph for AI training?

A few people have asked my advice on this recently so I’m sharing here in case it’s useful:

• Check if models have been trained on your monographs here.
• If your work has already been used for training, it’s unlikely it will ever be removed from models. Therefore you’re effectively receiving some (inadequate) compensation for the theft of your intellectual property.
• If your work hasn’t been used for training, it’s a case of weighing up the advantages against the disadvantages. Training on your work means you might be more likely to be visible within the model (i.e. more likely to be invoked in response to a prompt about your domain) but this is a deeply unpredictable matter. Conversely it means your work might be diffused in a way that means your intellectual labour is chopped up and repackaged without any link to you.
• So it’s a case of considering how much you value the potential visibility, which I would argue is non-trivial, against how much the potential severing of the link between your ideas and your authorship bothers you.

If it helps, I agonised about this in my role as a literary executor (cared much less about my own work) and reached the conclusion that diffusion of the ideas is best served by being incorporated into training. I wouldn’t expect everyone to reach the same conclusion but I hope it’s useful to make these suggestions about factors to consider.

#intellectualProperty #LLMs #postTraining #publishing #scholarlyPublishing #Training #visibility

We invite you to join the Community Workshop on Open Source Publishing.

These workshops aim to bring together people with shared interests and/or similar goals to get to know each other through facilitated networking.

Our 2nd session will bring together people working on open publishing like book publishing, Web-to-Print, etc.

If you are active in this field and would like to meet others who are as well, you are welcome to join.

https://nlnet.nl/events/20251006/workshop-publishing/index.html

#publishing #NGI0

"The question that arises at this stage is whether openness in knowledge constitutes the Achilles heel of the once profitable legacy publishing industry or whether it is the Trojan horse of the latter for increasing its revenues."

https://www.mdpi.com/2304-6775/13/4/46

#publishing #openaccess #oa #academicchatter #journals

We invite you to join the Community Workshop on Open Source Publishing.

These workshops aim to bring together people with shared interests and/or similar goals to get to know each other through facilitated networking.

Our 2nd session will bring together people working on open publishing like book publishing, Web-to-Print, etc.

If you are active in this field and would like to meet others who are as well, you are welcome to join.

https://nlnet.nl/events/20251006/workshop-publishing/index.html

#publishing #NGI0

Okay #DuckDuckFedi, what are your opinions on Substack alternatives? In particular, I'm looking for:
- no login- or paywall requirement
- can send out a newsletter
- can accept payment, either as a donation or to access some exclusive posts
- not run by fascists

Thank you!

#AskFedi #Publishing #Newsletter

"This review draws upon insights from a curated body of recently published research papers to highlight structural injustices in academic publishing, their adverse effects on global research output, and the excessive pressure placed on faculty members to fulfill the requirements of accreditation agencies."

https://jscires.org/10.5530/jscires.20250015

#scholcomm #publishing #academicchatter #openaccess

So I relaunched my blog again. This time I’m hosting it myself. Never again with third-party platforms.

My bad experiences with Medium and @write_as led me here, to my own Jekyll solution.

My very first article published with this system talks about the journey and why this decision matters.

(Also, I have finally resolved to calling it a blog.)

https://markwrites.io/i-should-have-self-hosted-to-begin-with/

#Writing#Publishing#Design#Development#Accessibility#Blog

So I relaunched my blog again. This time I’m hosting it myself. Never again with third-party platforms.

My bad experiences with Medium and @write_as led me here, to my own Jekyll solution.

My very first article published with this system talks about the journey and why this decision matters.

(Also, I have finally resolved to calling it a blog.)

https://markwrites.io/i-should-have-self-hosted-to-begin-with/

#Writing#Publishing#Design#Development#Accessibility#Blog

"Everything I Know about Self-Publishing"

This is a great, informative read by Kevin Kelly (founder of Wired), perfect if you are noodling with the idea of self-publishing.

https://kk.org/thetechnium/everything-i-know-about-self-publishing/
#Publishing#Books#Kickstarter#Writing

One month into my blog launch and I am seeing on G4 traffic from “flipboard/activitypub”
What does this mean?

It’s visits coming from my federated Flipboard magazine not just from inside the @Flipboard app itself.

👉 It means my content is reaching beyond Flipboard into the broader audience (Fediverse). Readers are clicking through from there.
Maybe it’s time to look at the Fediverse more closely #fediverse #flipboard #blogging #publishing #content

One month into my blog launch and I am seeing on G4 traffic from “flipboard/activitypub”
What does this mean?

It’s visits coming from my federated Flipboard magazine not just from inside the @Flipboard app itself.

👉 It means my content is reaching beyond Flipboard into the broader audience (Fediverse). Readers are clicking through from there.
Maybe it’s time to look at the Fediverse more closely #fediverse #flipboard #blogging #publishing #content

By chance, does anyone reading this write or publish nonfiction books? If you do, please take a moment to read about my experiences as a reader.

I keep encountering nonfiction books in which most of the text is large black letters on a plain white background, which I can read. However, other text in the books is difficult or impossible to read, due to a lack of contrast between the text and the background. In some books, special information is contained in boxes that have gray backgrounds. In other books, especially books about wildlife and nature, there are full-page photos with black text ON the photos. For example, one book had black text on a photo of the ocean, which meant that the black text had a gray-blue background. In still other books, pages are of random colors.

If you have good eyes and can read black text on a dark background, you are fortunate. Please be aware that not all of us share that good fortune. If you want to reach a wider audience, please ensure that all black text is printed on a light-colored background.

This applies to all books, including books for children. There are children with low vision. There are also countless adults with vision problems who read to children or who simply like children's books. (The large print in many nonfiction books written for children makes them especially attractive to adults who lack 20/20 vision.)

Some people reading this post may be thinking that technology provides the solution to unreadable text. Although technology is great, there is no substitute for being able to read a book directly. For example, if I'm riding a bus, I use one hand to hold onto the bus and the other hand to hold onto my book, and there are no hands left for holding a gadget that could read the book to me.

Thanks for reading this.

#books #publishing #accessibility #vision#LowVision

By chance, does anyone reading this write or publish nonfiction books? If you do, please take a moment to read about my experiences as a reader.

I keep encountering nonfiction books in which most of the text is large black letters on a plain white background, which I can read. However, other text in the books is difficult or impossible to read, due to a lack of contrast between the text and the background. In some books, special information is contained in boxes that have gray backgrounds. In other books, especially books about wildlife and nature, there are full-page photos with black text ON the photos. For example, one book had black text on a photo of the ocean, which meant that the black text had a gray-blue background. In still other books, pages are of random colors.

If you have good eyes and can read black text on a dark background, you are fortunate. Please be aware that not all of us share that good fortune. If you want to reach a wider audience, please ensure that all black text is printed on a light-colored background.

This applies to all books, including books for children. There are children with low vision. There are also countless adults with vision problems who read to children or who simply like children's books. (The large print in many nonfiction books written for children makes them especially attractive to adults who lack 20/20 vision.)

Some people reading this post may be thinking that technology provides the solution to unreadable text. Although technology is great, there is no substitute for being able to read a book directly. For example, if I'm riding a bus, I use one hand to hold onto the bus and the other hand to hold onto my book, and there are no hands left for holding a gadget that could read the book to me.

Thanks for reading this.

#books #publishing #accessibility #vision#LowVision

Indirect but I do love it when capitalists that hate public infrastructure realize that their capital depends on public infrastructure as well. How Cuts to Library Budgets Will Impact Publishers https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/publisher-news/article/98371-public-libraries-must-further-trim-their-budgets-how-will-it-impact-publishers.html#Publishing#Library#Libraries

Indirect but I do love it when capitalists that hate public infrastructure realize that their capital depends on public infrastructure as well. How Cuts to Library Budgets Will Impact Publishers https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/publisher-news/article/98371-public-libraries-must-further-trim-their-budgets-how-will-it-impact-publishers.html#Publishing#Library#Libraries

Earlier this week Ghost announced a major update. With it, every Ghost publication is now on the Open Social Web.

This is a huge step forward for the Open Social Web and a real testament to how work across the Social Web is benefitting creators and organisations away from Big Tech.

If you want to learn more, check out the changelog: https://ghost.org/changelog/6/

#Ghost#SocialWeb#Fediverse#Publishing#OpenNetwork#Community#Blog#Newsletter#Mastodon

Other authors, I actually have enough audio to make a little Sightless Scribbles starter pack audiobook of sorts. Thing is, I am literally the worst with math, so if I tried to do any royalties, I would be in court quicker than you can blink because of my inadequate math skills, so what audiobook platform is everybody using? I don’t want to go with ACX because #Audible hates creatives and is actively trying to harm multiple creators, so does anyone have any other suggestions? Is there a platform that would handle these royalty payouts for me? I’m also not even sure if narrators get royalties or not? I paid for all of these narrations in the past. I’m just collecting them now. #Publishing#Author#Authors#IndieAuthors

Other authors, I actually have enough audio to make a little Sightless Scribbles starter pack audiobook of sorts. Thing is, I am literally the worst with math, so if I tried to do any royalties, I would be in court quicker than you can blink because of my inadequate math skills, so what audiobook platform is everybody using? I don’t want to go with ACX because #Audible hates creatives and is actively trying to harm multiple creators, so does anyone have any other suggestions? Is there a platform that would handle these royalty payouts for me? I’m also not even sure if narrators get royalties or not? I paid for all of these narrations in the past. I’m just collecting them now. #Publishing#Author#Authors#IndieAuthors