Direct input from customers is vital to CCC and RightsDirect for determining the path forward for our products and services. In Spring 2025, we brought together 27 information managers, medical affairs professionals, and lawyers from 20 R&D-driven organizations for a two-day in-person event, the 2025 RightsDirect Innovation Summit.
Topics at our interactive event in Frankfurt, Germany included the intersection of AI and copyright, the evolving workflows of information users, and the challenges in managing and curating high-quality data. Below are some of our top takeaways:
1. Information Managers play a vital role as advocates
Attendees told us that a critical part of their roles is to advocate with vendors for the needs of the information users throughout their companies, offering guidance on the resources available and what is possible using external tools and with existing company resources.
Information Managers are custodians of scientific knowledge, driving evidence-based insights extracted using explainable, reproducible search strategies. Attendees are enthusiastic to take advantage of opportunities offered by generative AI and emerging technologies but want to be careful not to be blinded by hype. Information Managers play a key role in experimenting with these new technologies with a critical eye, evaluating improvements in speed against the quality of results.
With small or even solo teams, Information Managers are challenged to fully understand the needs and use cases for all of the various roles within their global organizations. Similarly, information users don’t always understand the important work the information management team does. Vendors like us have a responsibility to partner with Information Managers to meet the needs of their internal users. Events like ours give Information Managers an important opportunity to learn from each other, build a network, and collaborate on solutions to common challenges.
2. AI rights and content need to be available at the same time
The growth of AI directly impacts two areas that are central to Information Managers’ roles: access to content and copyright compliance. Our attendees’ organizations’ policies ran the gamut from prohibiting use of AI altogether to authorizing enterprise tools for all employees to use. Some had specific rules regarding the use of copyrighted content like scientific literature in AI tools while others are silent on the topic. Attendees listed protection of company IP and copyright infringement as top concerns, and many say that content users don’t always understand what is permitted. Attendees shared that they are balancing executive mandates to drive innovation with AI while respecting the rights of copyright holders.
Attendees said it was insufficient to use only open access content with AI solutions, saying they need delivery of content—and rights to use it with AI—for scientific literature in both PDF and XML formats, singly and in bulk. They also stressed the importance of content and data beyond scientific literature such as clinical trials, standards, and supplementary materials, as well as the importance of publisher participation in collective licenses for internal AI uses and for systems to effectively manage rights they obtain directly from publishers.
3. Users want innovation, but not at the expense of usability or quality
Attendees are clearly excited about the possibilities for AI to increase speed and efficiency for users, and in getting lifesaving interventions to market. But inaccuracy and hallucinations are a top concern when evaluating solutions. They identified data bias, misclassification, the nature of LLMs being non-deterministic in their response, and black box algorithms as all hampering the ability to explain, reproduce and trust the results of AI solutions. Attendees were particularly alert to the need to keep a “human in the loop” to reduce the chance of inaccuracy. But the group agreed that a more effective approach is “AI in the loop,” where the human is driving a process supported by AI.
As information professionals, maintaining integrity of data is vital to the success of innovative projects. This is complicated with the lack of standards across vendors and the information industry in general, where each source for data independently believes that their format is the correct approach. This often causes conflict with the client’s own view, and ultimately, results in additional data processing work.
Finally, usability remains critical for innovative technologies. Attendees agreed that user expectations are influenced by the tools used in their personal lives, and they expect the solutions licensed by their organization for professional use to be similarly easy to use. Delivering solutions must manage complexities such as rights, data security, and IP protection while still delivering a clean and modern workflow and user experience.