Educational Publishers tackle AI, State Interference at Open Forum

The Open Educational Publishers Forum at Frankfurt Book Fair 2024 was well attended. Split into three session, the Forum covered how to use AI, how to prevent third parties using content with securing rights and a worrying look at state interference into educational publishing across different markets.

The first session was on Artificial intelligence in publishing presented by EPF regular Jaume Vicens and his colleague Xavier Fabrega, Vicens Vives (Spain). They demonstrated how they were able to use artificial intelligence to complete a number of editorial-related tasks more quickly and more cheaply - enabling them to be quicker to market at competitive rates. Fabrega, described a number of production situations where AI support could help, including completing repetitive, time-consuming tasks, or assisting with late additions to the expected deliverables.

From how to embrace AI to support your educational publishing business, the next presentation was on how to protect against AI tools using publishers' content without permission. Entitled The Text and data mining (TDM) Reservation Protocol: an EU-born solution to manage rights for AI, Giulia Marangoni of the Associazione Italiana Editori (AIE, Italy) presented this tool which communicates the availability of licences in a machine-readable format. She presented the origins of the tool, and the legal basis, before presenting the technical functionality and its link to Metadata like ONIX for books.

The morning closed with an in depth discussion at the intersection of the educational publishing and the freedom to publish. Moderated by former EPF Chair, Stephan de Valk, the session, entitled Government Interference in Educational Publishing, featured clear examples (including State financing, approval by state, taking over IP from publishers, State publishing, censorship, to self-censorship mechanisms) from a number of markets. Ildikó Török (Mozaik, Hungary) spoke of how the government had nationalised educational publishing almost overnight, leaving the country with no ministry of education and education being run by the Ministry of the Interior 'the same ministry that runs the police'. Dessislava Alexieva (Bulgaria) added details on recent moves in Bulgaria to attempt something similar. She urged associations to be alert and to monitor government actions assiduously. She noted how a recent anti-LGBT bill had gone from proposal to adoption in just a matter of hours, depriving civil society of the opportunity to engage. Sheikh Faisal (Malaysia) presented the work of educational publishers in Malaysia to convince the government not to seek ownership of the copyright of educational publishers' work. He noted how support could also come from inside the Ministry as different departments realised the scale of work to manage the rights for all textbooks. Brian Gilsenan (Ireland) told us that the Irish Ministry have moved from a parent purchasing model to a school funded model for the annual procurement of schools books. However, it has underfunded primary and over funded post primary. The result is a reduction in the amount of learning resources available to primary school teachers and pupils. Another unintended consequence is the impart on school bookshops, with 10% closing in the past two years due to the absence of footfall in these stores given the new purchasing model. Hugo Setzer (Mexico) spoke of the complicated situation in Mexico where low quality, State produced textbooks were now the only textbooks available as the government slowly bans the private educational textbook market. He also noted how seeking international support was not welcome by all local publishers who felt that it would be detrimental to their case.