European Society for Translation Studies

EST Open Letter about publishers selling access to academic content

The Board of the European Society of Translation Studies (EST) expresses its concern about the lack of transparency on the part of some academic publishers that have sold access rights to books and journal articles to companies engaged in developing large language models (LLMs). Authors should be informed about such new uses that were not foreseen when they signed away their rights in their contracts with publishers and offered the possibility of opting out. Although EST welcomes improvements in LLMs, it also supports library associations’ efforts to clarify that fair use is being made of taxpayer-funded research output.