Skip to main content
Connecting Human Futures and Intelligent Systems through Standards at NISO Plus

Connecting Human Futures and Intelligent Systems through Standards at NISO Plus

October 2026

The theme of the 2026 NISO Plus Global/Online conference, hosted on September 16–17. was “Connecting Human Futures and Intelligent Systems through Standards.” The NISO Plus Planning Committee chose this theme to reflect our current moment: information community members are using AI systems to increase efficiencies and in some cases, find new revenue streams, but they’re also trying to use it ethically and responsibly, in a way that supports research integrity and transparency. They’re also working to understand how the new technologies are changing how we think about content creation, copyright, and assessing value, and how we can adapt.

The conference program featured several sessions addressing these issues, and not surprisingly, they were popular among attendees. When asked in our post-event survey to identify their favorite parallel sessions, the top three were all focused on challenges raised by the use of AI in scholarly communications. Here they are, listed in descending order by the number of votes received:

  • Copyright at the Frontier: Licensing in the Age of AI addressed how the use of agents and AI tools has raised new legal questions about, for example, fair use. It also covered some of the challenges managing agents AI access presents to content providers. A representative of Copyright Clearance Center, a publishing consultant, and a librarian shared their perspectives.
  • In AI, Transparency, and Disclosure: Developing Policies and Measuring Success, representatives from society publishers as well as an academic library explained the rationale for their AI disclosure policies and shared their experiences with authors and students using AI. A representative of the STM Association also presented their draft taxonomy for disclosure.
  • Provenance and Citation UX in Generative AI Systems, featuring speakers from Creative Commons, an AI solutions vendor, and a large academic publisher, explored how best to track provenance and attribution for AI-assisted search results. 

Two keynote addresses also addressed AI in scholarly publishing, although in very different contexts. Opening keynote speaker Joy Owango introduced DOCiD, a new container identifier developed by the Africa PID Alliance, and explained how it enables intelligent systems to understand not only what an object is, but also its provenance, relationships, permissions, cultural context, and impact. In our closing keynote, “Knowledge Has a New Address,” Jeff Jarvis took on AI directly, exploring how it is changing our concept of authorship and attribution and setting this transformation in the context of the broader history of print media and publishing.

Feedback for the meeting overall was positive, with several attendees praising the interactivity and the opportunity to hear from diverse voices from the global community (over 20% of attendees reside in countries outside North America). As one respondent stated, 

The best thing about NISO Plus Global/Online is its focus on community and conversation. Instead of just listening to lectures, people from all over the world share their ideas, and solve problems together in a very friendly manner.

If you missed the conference, recordings of both opening and closing keynotes as well as the session “Persistently Evolving: What's New in the World of Persistent Identifiers” are publicly available. And if you’d like to participate in our next round of conversations, sign up for NISO Plus announcements! Information on our upcoming NISO Plus Baltimore meeting (February 15–17, 2027) is coming soon.