In a world where digital transformation and AI continue to disrupt the publishing landscape, rightsholders face a pressing need to protect their content, chart a course for sustainable growth, and promote responsible AI and research integrity. Licensing offers rightsholders an immediate and impactful way to safeguard rights, generate revenue, and maintain influence over how their content is managed and used – not just in traditional markets but in emerging AI-driven applications.
CCC sponsored the session “The Power of Licensing & Responsible AI – A Proactive Path for Publishers” at the 2025 London Book Fair in March.
This session was moderated by CCC Managing Director Roy Kaufman and featured Aaron Wood, Head, Product & Content Management, Publishing, American Psychological Association. The session looks at how rightsholders can navigate and adapt to AI’s evolving risks and opportunities while remaining agile and prepared for the impact of potential legal and legislative changes.
Audience members will learn how to build a robust licensing strategy that positions their content for success while lowering risks to research integrity and promoting responsible AI.
About the Speakers
Roy Kaufman is Managing Director of both Business Development and Government Relations for CCC. Prior to CCC, Kaufman served as Legal Director, John Wiley and Sons, Inc. He is a member of, among other things, the Bar of the State of New York, the Author’s Guild, and the editorial board of UKSG Insights. He serves on the Executive Committee of the of the United States Intellectual Property Alliance (USIPA) Board.
Aaron Wood leads product development and strategy, as well as indexing and production systems, for the American Psychological Association, a publisher of books, journals, courseware, video, and discovery solutions. His experience in scholarly communications and publishing is broad and multinational. Wood has led metadata and technical services at academic libraries and consortia, streaming video and audio platform development, print and electronic book acquisitions and ecommerce solutions, full-text journal and book production and distribution, and abstracting and indexing discovery solutions. He is a member of STM’s Standard and Technology Committee and the Crossref Board of Directors.
CCC helps publishers confidently transform their publishing models with a suite of data-driven solutions comprised of RightsLink for Scientific Communications, Ringgold Solutions, OA Intelligence, and RightsLink Author Services. The CCC Scholarly Communications Suite provides proven data-driven technology that leverages organizational persistent identifiers and supporting metadata to help publishers disambiguate data and enrich datasets, accelerate deal modeling, reliably manage APCs and OA agreements, and diversify revenue streams.
Through partnerships, integrations, and support of cross-stakeholder initiatives, CCC supports OA funding workflows that serve all community stakeholders — publishers, institutions, funders, and authors.
CCC also advocates across the industry for ways to improve data quality and system interoperability. We contribute to a number of industry working groups such as NISO, SSP, ISNI, ALPSP, STM, Subscribe to Open Community of Practice, and OA Switchboard.
And progress toward critical infrastructure improvements is underway. CCC recently updated The State of Scholarly Metadata, a visual report conducted in collaboration with Media Growth Strategies that depicts complexities and the value of metadata throughout the scholarly research lifecycle. The report now highlights numerous industry initiatives that aim to improve metadata management across the research lifecycle and highlights their progress toward addressing data challenges.