Publishers to share 20 million research papers with AI start-up

Six scientific publishers will share more than 20 million research papers with a clinical artificial intelligence start-up, on the condition that the company pays them and the authors per use.

The publishers – including Sage, the BMJ group and Chinese academic research collection Wangfang data – have struck a deal with Redpine, a Swedish company giving AI firms access to non-public data, it was announced on 6 October.

Publishers have previously raised concerns about AI companies using their data to train large language models – an issue that has been widely debated.

Redpine, a start-up founded in 2024, said its “pay-per-use approach” lets each publisher determine what an AI agent can use and the pricing per transaction, saying that it will ensure authors are properly remunerated for their work. It added that the access will run live through Redpine’s servers. “This means an [AI] agent can retrieve and cite primary literature at the moment it answers, instead of relying on training data, reducing hallucinations and errors,” it added.

According to Redpine, the data it supplies will enable drug discovery research teams to access decades of peer-reviewed literature. For clinical research, “trial design agents analyse thousands of prior trials to identify realistic patient populations and endpoints”, it said.

In addition to this, research agents at AI labs can draw conclusions on paywalled literature instead of brief summaries of it.

Anders Hammarbäck, co-founder and chief executive of Redpine, said: “The future of AI-driven scientific discovery should draw on all scientific research – without hallucinations and with both attribution and compensation to rights holders. This and a pay-per-use model is a game-changer for research teams.”

The other three publishers involved are the publishing arm of the Institute of Physics, IGI Global Scientific Publishing and RCNi, the publishing arm of the Royal College of Nursing.

Combined, the six publishers will give Redpine access to hundreds of prestigious journals in the medical and life sciences, and quantum and the physical sciences.

frances.jones@timeshighereducation.com