Behind the bookshelves - Recordings
Speaker: Jeroen Sondervan, Open Science NL
Geopolitical tensions and emerging threats increasingly shape the global research landscape and its supporting infrastructures, as national security concerns and financial constraints limit the open exchange of knowledge. At the same time, addressing global challenges—from pandemics and climate change to rapid technological transformation—depends on strong international scientific collaboration that remains as open and transparent as possible. This contribution examines how Open Science, with its emphasis on transparency, collaboration, and the reliability of scientific results, can be protected and sustained in these turbulent times, and how it may help increase resilience within the research ecosystem.
Download the slides here and find the referenced blog post here.
Speaker: Anina Köppli, Consortium of Swiss Academic Libraries
In this Coffee Lecture, Anina Köppli, Team Lead Negotiations at the Consortium of Swiss Academic Libraries, provides an insider’s perspective on negotiating with major scholarly publishers in a highly concentrated market.
Drawing on the Swiss big deal negotiations the talk explores strategies such as collective action, clear mandates, data-driven preparation, and credible alternatives. The session asks a central question: when is “no deal” a problem - and when can it be part of the solution?
Download the slides here.
Speaker: Katharina Eggenberger, WSL
Consolidating the legal basis for Open Research Data (ORD) is one of the five measures in the ETH ORD programme. Identification of obstacles, clarification of responsibilities, and development of ORD guidelines as common reference within the research institutes are the key objectives here. The guidelines aim to facilitate and promote the making available of research data as ORD by providing a set of rules to be applied. They offer an orientation to support researchers in their ORD-related decisions, based on the ORD strategy of the respective institution.
Download the slides here.
Speaker: Olivia Denk, Swiss academies of arts and sciences
In this coffee lecture, presented by the co-coordinator of CoARA’s Swiss National Chapter, researchers were introduced to CoARA’s mission to reshape research culture. The presentation focused on the initiative’s vision and current activities of its communities, like Working Groups and National Chapters. Additionally, the role of Open Science in transforming research assessment was highlighted.
Download the slides here.
Open Access Week - Recordings
“Who owns our knowledge?” – The motto of this year’s Open Access Week raises a question that has been at the core of the Open Access movement. The rise of AI and large language model (LLM) training and use brings a new urgency to this question. In this talk, David Rosenthal shared his perspective as expert lawyer on this field. Specifically, he focused on how today's copyright law deals with the training of large language models with third party content (what is permitted?), how well copyright law is prepared for fairly balancing the interests of rights holders models and those using AI and what we have to expect from a legal point of view.
Speaker: David Rosenthal counts to the leading experts in Data and Technology law in Switzerland and is partner at the Swiss law firm Vischer. His view on the topic is broadened also by his earlier work as software developer, journalist and legal advisor.
In several blog entries, he and his colleagues focus specifically on the interplay of AI/LLM use with Swiss and EU copyright, data, and privacy laws. In cooperation with the ETH AI center, they also authored a detailed legal analysis about LLM training with regard to the Swiss legal system. On behalf of the Consortium of Swiss Academic Libraries, he played a key role in shaping the AI clause in the publishing agreement with Wiley, signed earlier this year.
His publication on challenges for media houses in an era of 'agentic AI' services even led to discussions in the Swiss National Council on how to amend Swiss copyright law.
Recording and slides for the talk AI & Copyright - friends or foes? © 2025 by David Rosenthal are licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0
Panelists:
Guest (University of Zürich): Prof. Dr. Torsten Hothorn
Professor of Biostatistics at the Epidemiology, Biostatistics and Prevention Institute, Co-Editor-in-Chief for the Diamond OA Journal of Statistical Software
Eawag: Prof. Dr. Juliane Hollender
Associate Editor for Environmental Science & Technology (hybrid)
Empa: Dr. Mateusz Wyrzykowski
Managing Editor for RILEM Technical Letters (Diamond OA)
PSI: Dr. Anuschka Pauluhn
Editor for ISSI Bern , books & public outreach journals for astrophysics & space science
WSL: Dr. Eckehard Brockerhoff
Co-Editor-in-Chief for New Zealand Journal of Forestry Science (Diamond OA), Associate/Subject Editor for other journals incl. Biodiversity and Conservation & New Zealand Entomologist
As our contribution to Open Access Week 2023 and as part of WSL Distinguished Lectures, Lib4RI hosted a lecture by Matthias Egger, President of the National Research Council of the SNSF.
Abstract
In recent years, Open Access (OA) publishing has experienced rapid growth, witnessing the emergence of numerous new publishers and journals. In this talk, I will explore the benefits, challenges, and potential pitfalls of OA publishing from the perspectives of both an active researcher and a research funder. I will briefly revisit the well-rehearsed arguments for OA and discuss some challenges and abuses, such as peer review quality or predatory practices. Finally, I will conclude with a discussion of best practices and alternative publishing models.
The slides and video of Matthias Egger's talk “Open access: the good, the bad and the ugly?” are only available within the four Research Institutes! Please connect to the server via cable or VPN.
Love Data Week - Recordings
Please note: The videos of these coffee lectures are only available within the four Research Institutes! Please connect to the server via cable or VPN.
AI tools & LLMs - Recordings & material
As the demand for information and better understanding of AI tools, their capabilities, limitations and implications for academia and the publishing domain continues to surge, Lib4RI is excited to announce a lecture series for end of 2023 and early 2024!
The rise of AI technologies presents both exciting opportunities and challenges for academia and the publishing world. While these tools can enhance research, streamline content creation, and automate certain tasks, ethical concerns and questions of academic integrity have arisen. There are ongoing debates surrounding issues like authorship, plagiarism detection, and the impact of automated content generation on traditional publishing practices. Our lecture series will address these important concerns and provide insights on how to navigate this evolving landscape.
In this presentation, Mark Cieliebak sheds light on recent developments in Generative AI, with a strong focus on Large Language Models (LLMs) such as ChatGPT. This covers topics as broad as text summarization, essay generation, or chatbots. He will introduce the underlying technologies, present several showcases, and assess the potential of LLMs in future research and development. The core algorithms will be explained on a level that is also suitable for a non-technical audience.
The slides and video of Mark Cieliebak's talk "Language Models. Fundamental technologies and applications" are only available within the four Research Institutes! Please connect to the server via cable or VPN.
The second lecture in this series by Dr. Sampoorna Rappaz will specifically explore the role of LLMs in academia, addressing crucial themes such as: the impact of LLMs on academic writing, the ethical and practical considerations when integrating LLMs into academic work, and the opportunities and challenges presented by this transformative technology.
The slides and video of Sampoorna Rappaz' talk "What you need to know when using AI for academic writing" are only available within the four Research Institutes! Please connect to the server via cable or VPN.
In this talk, Sandra Marmy-Brändli will elaborate on the potential copyright issues researchers may face when using AI tools in their research. First, she will look at the question of whether AI-output can be protected by copyright law and if so under what conditions. Secondly, she will take a deeper look at potential copyright obstacles for training AI tools with copyright protected material, as well as potential defense strategies. Lastly, she will review the potential risks of infringing third party copyrights by using output created by AI tools.
The main aim of the presentation is to provide an overview over the legal situation in Switzerland; however, she will also shed light on the situation in the EU and briefly review some of the most recent ongoing AI cases from around the world, namely the pending AI law suits in the United States.
