Publishing Director: Civil & Mechanical Engineering

EU gathers pledges to boost researchers' AI use. By Isaac Barbosa Elsevier promises access to tools and training, while Cern will develop physics model Companies and philanthropic organisations have committed to help European researchers use artificial intelligence to power their work, through pledges provided to an EU initiative. Pledges by organisations including US tech giant Alphabet's DeepMind Institute, US chip maker Nvidia and European scholarly publisher Elsevier were announced at the European AI in Science Summit in Dublin on 15 October. Ekaterina Zaharieva, the EU commissioner for startups, research and innovation, said in a statement: "Its ambition for AI in science can only become reality if Research Professional News bring together the strengths of its research community, industry and other partners. "Our pledging campaign is now turning this ambition into concrete commitments that give researchers access to the tools, expertise and resources they need to innovate." To participate, organisations need to show "sustained support for AI in science beyond their direct commercial interests", the European Commission said. This could include funding, access to AI or computing infrastructure, scholarships, fellowships or training programmes. Elsevier offers 'breadth of capability' Elsevier said in a press release that its commitments included providing complimentary licences to its AI-powered research and clinical tools for researchers, healthcare professionals and students. It said it will also provide around €1 million a year in funding and non-financial support to "strengthen Europe's AI research talent pipeline and advance responsible, AI-centred research", collaborating with at least three European research institutions per year by providing them with access to its experts and tools. Training and career development opportunities will also be provided to around 10 AI master's students, doctoral candidates and postdoctoral researchers each year, it said. "Europe's world-leading researchers and clinicians...need platforms and partnerships they can trust. Through this pledge, Elsevier is bringing the full breadth of its capabilities to that effort - funded collaborations, training for the next generation of scientists, and research-grade AI and clinical solutions for better outcomes," said chief executive Kumsal Bayazit. Cern backs 'largest AI model in physics' Europe's organisation for nuclear physics research, Cern, will partner with French AI developer Mistral to build "the largest foundation model in physics", according to the Commission. Cern said the Large Physics Model would initially focus on high-energy physics - helping to reconstruct particle collisions, flag unexpected signals and evaluate future detector designs using data from its Large Hadron Collider - but added that it "has the potential to contribute to the development of AI approaches that can serve the broader scientific community". "High-energy physics provides a unique environment in which AI can be developed and tested with exceptional rigour," said Enrica Porcari, Cern's chief information officer. "We are partnering with Mistral...to advance AI capabilities that can serve the whole physics community." Other initial backers include the Danish Novo Nordisk Foundation, French drug company Sanofi and Switzerland-based scholarly publisher Frontiers. Observatory launched The pledges were gathered under the umbrella of the EU's Resource for AI Science in Europe initiative, which is establishing a virtual research institute to support AI research and the use of AI by researchers. On the same day, Raise also announced the launch of an observatory to help researchers and research support staff explore how AI is being used in different fields, to support adoption, training and collaboration.

Major publishers seek $19.5 million default judgment against shadow library welib. 1 hr ago - 15 October 2026 Nana Muazin OvFile Reporter A coalition of major book publishers has asked a New York federal court to issue a $19.5 million default judgment against WeLib, a shadow library that allegedly cloned its underlying source code and the vast majority of its digital collection from Anna's Archive. The legal move follows a nearly identical copyright infringement case that concluded in May against Anna's Archive, resulting in a severe financial and operational penalty. Interestingly, a close examination of the publishers' recent legal filing reveals that the plaintiffs' legal team seemingly "copied" portions of their own previous briefs - including factual claims and typos that do not actually apply to WeLib's distinct setup. The legal battle underscores the escalating efforts by traditional publishing giants to stamp out the modern ecosystem of automated shadow libraries. Last year, the team behind Anna's Archive issued a public warning to its own user base regarding WeLib, describing the platform as a new and opportunistic entrant into the shadow library landscape. According to the original developers, WeLib appeared to have mirrored most of Anna's Archive's expansive collection and utilized a direct fork of its codebase. Because WeLib's anonymous operators were allegedly taking scraped data and code improvements without contributing anything back to the broader project, Anna's Archive cautioned prospective visitors against utilizing the service. In June, a coalition of major book publishers arrived at a strikingly similar conclusion regarding the site's origins, albeit through the lens of intellectual property law. Representatives from industry giants including Penguin Random House, Elsevier, and HarperCollins filed a formal copyright infringement lawsuit against WeLib in a New York federal court. The complaint alleged that WeLib was deliberately established after its unknown operators copied both the foundational source code and the bulk of the contents belonging to Anna's Archive. Despite being formally served with allegations of widespread copyright infringement, WeLib's anonymous operators chose not to mount a legal defense or respond to the lawsuit in any capacity. This total lack of engagement prompted the plaintiffs to push the litigation forward, leading the court clerk to formally enter a default against the site in August. That procedural milestone cleared the path for the publishers to request a final, sweeping judgment from the bench. On Monday, the coalition of publishers formally petitioned U.S. District Judge Victor Marrero to issue a default judgment against WeLib and its unnamed operators. In their legal memorandum, the publishers did not mince words regarding the platform's commercial purpose. Defendant WeLib is characterized squarely as a pirate site whose sole business model revolves around the distribution of protected, copyrighted content in direct violation of the legal rights held by the plaintiffs and countless other copyright owners. To calculate the staggering financial penalty, the publishers requested the maximum statutory damages permitted under U.S. copyright law: $150,000 for each of the 130 specific literary works listed across the complaint, breaking down to ten targeted titles per publisher. This math totals exactly $19.5 million, matching the exact financial penalty that U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff awarded to the publishers in the earlier Anna's Archive case. The damages are split evenly across the thirteen corporate entities participating in the lawsuit. Apress Media, Cengage Learning, Elsevier, Hachette Book Group, HarperCollins, John Wiley & Sons, Macmillan Learning, Macmillan Publishing Group, McGraw Hill, Pearson Education, Penguin Random House, Simon and Schuster, and the Taylor & Francis Group are each slated to receive $1.5 million if the court approves the request in full. Beyond the statutory damages, the publishers' motion places a sharp spotlight on WeLib's monetization and revenue generation model. While the platform presents itself as a free service to casual visitors, it actively prompts users to provide monthly monetary contributions disguised as "donations," with requested tiers scaling up to $90 a month. According to the publishers' brief, these transactions are not altruistic contributions at all, but rather direct payments used to bypass artificial throttling and secure faster download speeds. To cripple the platform's ongoing operations, the publishers are also pressing the court to enact a permanent injunction. If granted, this sweeping order would legally compel domain registries and registrars to completely disable the primary domains associated with the enterprise, specifically welib.org, welib.st, and welib-public.org, while simultaneously blocking any attempts to transfer those domains to entities outside the control of the plaintiffs. Furthermore, web hosting providers offering infrastructure services to the sites would be legally required to cease serving them immediately. While the proposed injunction would broadly bind all applicable technical intermediaries, the legal filing specifically names five key entities that play a structural role in maintaining the web presence of the service. These named intermediaries include the Public Interest Registry, Cloudflare, Tucows, and two distinct corporate entities tied to Njalla. Notably, this list is considerably shorter than the one featured in the Anna's Archive judgment, which targeted more than twenty different internet intermediaries. A Curious Copy-Paste in the Legal Brief As the legal proceedings advanced, a peculiar detail emerged regarding the preparation of the publishers' default judgment brief. It is standard practice for modern law firms to utilize successful arguments from prior, closely related litigation, and that efficiency was clearly exercised by the law firm Oppenheim + Zebrak, which represents the publishers in both cases. However, the reliance on previous templates appears to have gone a step further, resulting in arguments that describe operational mechanics unproven or entirely absent in WeLib's case. According to the text of the brief, WeLib actively diverts revenue away from the publishers at a scale made significantly worse by its reliance on the viral BitTorrent protocol. Despite this assertion, public reporting and the underlying complaint against WeLib do not contain any evidence or allegations that the platform utilizes BitTorrent for file distribution. Instead, the specific paragraphs discussing this mechanism originally detailed various market harms, including lost retail sales and the exploitation of copyrighted texts for artificial intelligence training data, in the Anna's Archive lawsuit. The exact same sentence appears, word for word, in the brief filed against Anna's Archive. In that earlier context, the claim was directly supported by the factual record of the complaint, which thoroughly outlined how Anna's Archive provides torrent files for bulk data harvesting via a dedicated download page. WeLib's own operational structure, by contrast, relies on a different mechanism, serving files directly from centralized servers through a tiered system of slow and paid fast downloads. The borrowing from the previous legal filing extends beyond isolated sentences. The brief also alleges that WeLib's infringement continued despite multiple prior legal actions brought against the operators. While Anna's Archive has faced various legal onslaughts across multiple jurisdictions, legal observers note there are no public records of any prior lawsuits directed specifically at WeLib's anonymous creators. Even minor stylistic artifacts from the earlier brief managed to find their way into the new document. Both legal memoranda contain identical phrasing regarding what happens if the court is "satified" that the established default standards are met, alongside an identical grammatical construction arguing that the defendants cannot establish they have not presented any meritorious defenses. A Paper Victory on the Horizon? It now falls to U.S. District Judge Victor Marrero to review the filings and render a final decision on the motion for default judgment and the accompanying permanent injunction. Regardless of the judicial outcome, legal analysts point out that the publishers are statistically unlikely to recover any of the multi-million-dollar award, given that WeLib's operators continue to operate under a veil of anonymity. The precedent set by Anna's Archive suggests that an American court order may cause logistical hurdles for WeLib, but it rarely spells the definitive end of such platforms. Despite being hit with a massive financial judgment and global domain takedown orders, Anna's Archive successfully maintained its web presence by shifting operations to alternative domain extensions tied to registries and registrars located outside the jurisdictional reach of the United States. If Anna's Archive serves as any reliable indicator, a favorable ruling and ensuing injunction will likely strip WeLib of its current domains and cause temporary disruption. However, in the decentralized ecosystem of shadow libraries, such enforcement actions rarely guarantee the permanent disappearance of the platforms. Copies of the publishers' memorandum in support of the motion for default judgment, along with the proposed default judgment order, the formal statement of damages, and the comparative briefs from the Anna's Archive litigation, have been filed into the public docket of the New York federal court. Representatives for Oppenheim + Zebrak were approached for comment regarding the BitTorrent references in the legal filing, but did not provide a response prior to publication. Related topics.

Elsevier pledges AI tools and €1m annual support to European research initiative. 14 October 2026 Elsevier has pledged 4,000 complimentary licences for its AI-powered research and clinical tools, alongside an estimated €1m a year in funding and in-kind support, as part of the European Commission's AI in Science Enablers Initiative. The commitment, due to be announced at the AI in Science Summit in Dublin, is intended to support AI adoption across European research and healthcare, strengthen research collaborations and develop the next generation of AI specialists. The summit brings together more than 1,000 representatives from research, technology, business and policy to launch the Commission's initiative, which aims to mobilise private-sector and philanthropic support for European science. As part of its pledge, Elsevier will provide 1,000 complimentary licences for each of four products: LeapSpace, ClinicalKey AI, ClinicalKey Nursing AI and Complete Anatomy. LeapSpace, Elsevier's AI-powered research workspace, is designed to support researchers with complex tasks across the research workflow. The company also plans to develop a Europe-wide challenge in collaboration with the European Commission. ClinicalKey AI provides evidence-based clinical decision support, while ClinicalKey Nursing AI is designed to assist nurses with clinical decision-making and professional development. Complete Anatomy is a 3D anatomy education platform. Beyond access to its technology, Elsevier has committed an estimated €1m annually in funding and in-kind support to advance AI research and training across Europe. The programme will include at least three new collaborations each year with European research institutions, providing access to Elsevier's content and knowledge discovery tools, as well as expertise in data science, ethics and software development. Elsevier will also participate in the Horizon-funded AIRIS project, which supports AI-enabled hypothesis generation in biomedicine, and establish a new Centre on Hybrid Intelligence for Trustworthy Research in partnership with the University of Amsterdam and Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. The company additionally plans to provide training and career development opportunities for approximately 10 PhD candidates, postdoctoral researchers and master's students each year through its internal programmes. Kumsal Bayazit, CEO of Elsevier, said: "Europe's world-leading researchers and clinicians are working at the frontier of AI, and they need platforms and partnerships they can trust. "Through this pledge, Elsevier is bringing the full breadth of its capabilities to that effort - funded collaborations, training for the next generation of scientists, and research-grade AI and clinical solutions for better outcomes. We're proud to support the European Commission's AI in Science Enablers Initiative and to help build an AI research ecosystem for Europe that is innovative, responsible, and sustainable."