STM and Ithaka S+R launch research project on the interface between scholarly content and AI

“The Endpoint Question” will examine how scholarly content should meet AI agents at the point of access

As AI-powered research assistants and agentic systems become an increasingly important route to scholarly content, STM and Ithaka S+R today announced a new independent study, and invite publishers’ technical teams, platform providers, AI developers and open repositories to contribute their experience. “The Endpoint Question” will gather evidence on how AI agents discover, access, use, and attribute scholarly content, helping to define requirements to inform future standards and implementation approaches. The project is part of TRACE – a cross-stakeholder initiative involving STM, NISO, COUNTER, and other partners examining the future of trusted retrieval and attribution in AI-mediated scholarly communication, for the benefit of the entire scholarly communications ecosystem.

The study follows STM’s recent consultation on the responsible use of research content in Generative AI, which found broad support for key tenets of scholarly communications including verifiability through attribution and citation; inclusion of rebuttals, corrections, and retractions; transparency; and differentiation between peer-reviewed and non-peer-reviewed content. The Endpoint Question takes the next step by exploring how these principles can be supported in practice, considering both how AI agents identify and interact with scholarly content today, and what a trusted scholarly endpoint should look like in the future.

“AI agents are becoming an increasingly important gateway to scholarly content, but the scholarly community has not yet agreed how those systems should discover, access, attribute and use research content. That is the question this study sets out to explore. As publishers, repositories and AI developers begin building the next generation of research tools, we need a shared understanding of what a trusted, authorised and provenance-aware interaction should look like.” – Hylke Koers, Chief Information Officer, STM Solutions.

The three-month study, led by Ithaka S+R, will investigate how AI agents discover scholarly content, authenticate through a user’s entitlements, receive provenance-bearing information, and create a credible record of content use. Bringing together publishers, repositories, infrastructure providers and AI developers, the research will explore where approaches are converging, where challenges remain, and what requirements there are for future implementation to support trusted scholarly communications.

Ithaka S+R will conduct the study independently, drawing on the experience of publishers, open repositories, platform providers, and AI developers, and will publish its findings openly.

Key areas of investigation will include:

• What constitutes a trusted scholarly endpoint for AI agents
• How publishers can identify and understand agent-mediated activity
• How provenance and attribution information can travel through AI workflows
• How content consumption by AI systems can be measured and understood
• What approaches are most likely to be adopted by AI developers and platform providers.

“The technology is moving quickly, but much of the experimentation is happening organisation by organisation.Publishers are already exploring MCP endpoints and other ways of enabling access to content, while new protocols are beginning to shape how agents discover and interact with information. This study gives the community an opportunity to examine the evidence and inform the standards and infrastructure that may follow.” – Todd Toler, Principal Investigator at Ithaka S+R.

To find out more about the study and express interest in participating, contact Hylke Koers, STM Solutions or Todd Toler, Ithaka S+R

About STM

STM is the leading global trade association for academic and professional publishers. It advances trusted research by strengthening the systems, standards, and partnerships that underpin scholarly communication.  https://stm-assoc.org

About Ithaka S+R

Ithaka S+R is part of ITHAKA, a nonprofit with a mission to improve access to knowledge and education for people around the world. Through research, collaboration, and innovation, Ithaka S+R informs policy, guides strategies, and builds evidence-based tools to broaden access to postsecondary education, improve student and workforce outcomes, and advance scholarship. https://sr.ithaka.org

About TRACE

TRACE is a cross-stakeholder collaboration bringing together publishers, standards organisations, technology companies, and other participants across the scholarly communication ecosystem. Its aim is to align the community around a shared approach to ensuring that trusted scholarly content remains visible, attributable, and measurable in an AI-driven world. As researchers increasingly interact with knowledge through AI assistants and agents, it is essential that AI systems can identify authoritative scholarly content, distinguish it from less reliable sources, preserve provenance, and provide transparent attribution. TRACE provides a collaborative forum and implementation framework through which its participants can develop and adopt the standards, metadata, workflows, and infrastructure needed to make this possible at scale. To find out more about TRACE, contact priya.madina@springernature.com