Text and archives · Scholarly journal archives · Updated 30 Oct 2026

Can a society or university press license its journal archive to AI companies, and what is it worth?

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Peer-reviewed articles from decades of issues, with their references, figures and data. Labs pay for edited, specialist text with its citations, and much of it sits behind subscriptions.

Value your journal archivesSelling Books to AI Companies: Prices, Deals and Who Gets Paid
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Prices on record
11

sales that happened, offered to holders

Who holds it
Learned and professional societies that own their journals, University presses, Independent journal publishers
Who has paid, offered or listed
John Wiley & Sons, Anthropic, Informa (Taylor & Francis), Microsoft, ProRata

The short answer · figures from the market's records, last reviewed 30 Oct 2026

Can a society or university press license its journal archive to AI companies, and what is it worth?

Yes, where its author agreements give it the rights. John Wiley & Sons reported $33.1 million from licensing its journals and research content in the year to April 2026, and Informa (Taylor & Francis) earned almost £8m ($10m) in the first year of licensing its books and journals to Microsoft. Presses that ask authors to opt in pay them a share: Cambridge University Press pays them 20% of licence revenue. Where a commercial publisher runs a society's journal, their contract decides who may license the archive.

What buyers have paid, offered or asked for journal archives

The whole price board

Every price in the market's records about journal archives, each with its source and the day it was read. Open a row for the source's own words.

11 public prices

  • Wiley Research segment: AI licence revenue, quarter ended 31 July 2026 ($10.1M Research Publishing, $3.6M Research Solutions)

    Aggregate, no title count. Last year's quarter was almost all Research Solutions ($15.7M, content Wiley licenses from other publishers); this year $10.1M sits in Research Publishing, Wiley's own journals.

    Text and archivesSales that happenedJul 2026The payer's own page

    John Wiley & Sons Form 10-Q for the quarter to 31 July 2026 (SEC), segment results

    $13.7M

    per quarter (all AI licensees in the segment)

  • Wiley scholarly and learning content licensed for AI (all licensees, fiscal year to 30 April 2026)

    Aggregate revenue, not one deal; $19.4M of it came from other publishers' content Wiley resold for a royalty.

    Text and archivesSales that happenedApr 2026The payer's own page

    John Wiley & Sons Form 10-K (SEC)

    $49.1M

    per year (all AI licensees)

  • Wiley Research segment: AI licence revenue (journals and research content, all licensees), fiscal year to 30 April 2026

    Aggregate revenue, not one deal and no title count. Together with the Learning row it splits the $49.1M total (held): research content tripled while book content fell.

    Text and archivesSales that happenedApr 2026The payer's own page

    John Wiley & Sons Form 10-K for the year to 30 April 2026 (SEC), segment results

    About $33.1M

    per year (all AI licensees in the segment)

  • What one academic author received as his share when a small, ethical academic publisher licensed one of his monographs to an unnamed AI training company (opt-in by tick box, publisher keeps 50% of the total fee, buyer undisclosed under NDA)

    First-hand account by the payee of a payment received at the end of 2025. The publisher and the AI company are not named (the publisher was under an NDA), so this is one self-reported data point, but it is an opt-in programme at a 50/50 split, like HarperCollins. The author calls the amount 'rather pathetically small' and the most he has made from writing in a year.

    Text and archivesSales that happenedFeb 2026The payer's own page

    Richard Pinner, Uniliterate, Academic Publishing AI Deals: My Biggest Paycheque Ever (24 February 2026)

    $674

    per title (author's cheque after the publisher's 50% cut, one-off)

    Published as £500

  • Author's default half of the per-work award in the Bartz v. Anthropic settlement (trade and university press books on the Works List)

    Damages for past use of pirated copies, not a licence price; gross of fees (the court later cut class counsel's award to about 6.8% of the fund). Education works have no default split. The gross $3,000 is on the board as bartz-anthropic-per-work. One settlement, so it counts once: through the fund divided over the works on the final Works List, the court order's own figure for what was paid per book.

    Text and archivesSales that happenedJan 2026Court record

    Bartz v. Anthropic, court-approved long-form class notice (updated deadline 8 Jan 2026)

    About $3,000

    per work (author's default 50% share)

    $1,500 per book or title

  • Wiley's learning and research content licensed to tech companies for AI, total earned to date by August 2024

    Wiley's first AI licensing money, with a further $21 million then expected in the same financial year; authors were given no opt-out. Wiley's later fiscal years are on the board as wiley-fy2026-ai-licensing.

    Text and archivesSales that happenedAug 2024Press report

    infoDOCKET, citing The Bookseller

    $23M

    earned to date from AI deals

  • Taylor & Francis academic books and journals licensed to Microsoft for AI (first year of the deal)

    The $10m is the source's own conversion of about £8m. Authors were not told, could not opt out and were paid nothing extra, which is the rights risk a buyer prices in.

    Text and archivesSales that happenedMay 2024Press report

    ISSN International Centre newsletter, Taylor & Francis sells access to research to Microsoft AI

    $10M

    first year of the deal

    Published as almost £8m ($10m) in its first year

  • ProRata (Gist.ai, an AI answer engine on licensed content): share of its revenue paid to content partners, which include book and journal publishers

    The seller of the licence is paid in a revenue share, not a fee per book. Johns Hopkins University Press (June 2025) and AAAS (January 2025) are named partners in the Ithaka S+R tracker. No per-title amount is published, so the share cannot be turned into a price for a title. ProRata's redesigned site no longer states the share, and its llms.txt says attribution "does not establish a legal payment entitlement"; the figure stands as of its date. Later statements of the same split: ProRata's partnership summary for publishers (April 2025) says content owners always receive a 50% share of revenues, ProRata's Danish collective deal (16 December 2025) says it is committed to a 50-50 ad revenue share, and a trade-press comparison (3 March 2026) still says ad revenue is split 50/50. No source found says the share has changed.

    Text and archivesOffered to holdersOct 2026The payer's own page

    ProRata home page

    50% of revenues

    share of ProRata revenue, split among partners by how much of their content is used in answers

  • Author's expected return when Johns Hopkins University Press licenses a backlist title to an unnamed LLM developer (opt-out programme, about 3,000 backlist titles)

    The press director's own guidance to authors; the buyer and the press's total fee were not disclosed. An upper bound only, and about 1/25th of the HarperCollins author share.

    Text and archivesOffered to holdersJul 2025Press report

    The Baltimore Banner, Johns Hopkins Press will license its books to train AI

    Up to $100

    per title, per licence (author's share)

  • Royalty Cambridge University Press pays authors who opt in when their work is used in a generative AI licensing deal

    A split, not a dollar figure; per the post, licence revenue is divided equally across all content items in the licensed collection before the 20% applies.

    Text and archivesOffered to holdersFeb 2025Press report

    Silicon Reckoner (Michael Harris), quoting Cambridge University Press's letter to authors

    a royalty of 20%

    share of licence revenue per title

  • Share of AI licensing income that some academic presses offer their authors per title, as reported by the Authors Guild (presses not named)

    A split, not a dollar figure, and the presses are unnamed. It sits between Bloomsbury and Cambridge (20%) and HarperCollins and Black Inc (50%); the Guild calls 75 to 85 percent to the author fair.

    Text and archivesOffered to holdersDec 2024Press report

    Authors Guild, AI Licensing for Authors: Who Owns the Rights and What's a Fair Split?

    a mere 25 percent

    share of AI licence income per title

Where this data comes from, and who lists it

The whole supply map
Raises the price
  • Rights to the full text, not only the abstracts
  • Decades of issues in clean XML
  • Fields where little is open access
  • References, figures and data kept with each article
The rights question

A journal licenses what its author agreements give it: articles whose copyright passed to the publisher are its to license, while articles published open access already allow reuse on their licence's terms. Where a commercial publisher runs a society's journal, their contract decides who may license the archive.

The guide on what else to settle

Who has bought, offered or listed journal archives

Buyers that take text, and what each publishes

Kind of data
Kind of buyer

7 buyers taking text and archives, largest published figure first

More about text
All text: rates, buyers and rightsTranslation memories and parallel textForum and community archives

Hold journal archives? A valuation takes about two minutes: it says what buyers pay and whether we would run the sale. Prices last read 30 Oct 2026.

Value your journal archivesHow a sale works

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