Can I use published journal articles as a knowledge base for my chatbot? Does it make a difference whether they are open access or not? Which licences can be used and how? Does it make a difference whether I run a locally operated AI model or a cloud-based model (such as gpt) on it?
thx for helping
German:
Darf ich veröffentlichte journal article als wissensbasis für meinen chatbot nutzen? Gibt es einen Unterschied ob sie open access oder nicht veröffentlicht sind? Welche Lizenzen darf man wie benutzen? Gibt es einen Unterschied, ob ich ein lokal betriebenes KI-Modell oder ein cloud-basiertes Modell (wie zb gpt) darauf laufen lasse?
Yes, you can use journal articles as a knowledge base for a chatbot, but there are several critical considerations:
- Licensing matters:
Only use articles under permissive licenses like CC BY or CC0.
Open access does not always mean free for AI use—some licenses (e.g., CC BY-NC or CC BY-ND) restrict commercial use or derivative works.
Paywalled content (e.g., from Elsevier, Springer) cannot be used without explicit permission.
- Local vs Cloud Models:
If you're using a cloud-based model (like GPT), uploaded content may be processed externally—raising compliance and data retention concerns.
A locally hosted model gives more control but still doesn’t bypass legal/licensing restrictions.
- Best Practices:
Stick to articles with clear reuse rights.
Avoid copying full articles—consider summarizing or extracting insights.
Always cite your sources, even for open content.
Use datasets explicitly intended for AI training (e.g., PubMed Open Access, CORD-19, arXiv).
If your chatbot is for research or education, that helps—but licensing and deployment context still matter, especially for anything public or commercial.
thx very much.
do u also know: What about theses that have only been submitted to the university but not officially published?
Great question, Fabian Bohnacker !
If a thesis was submitted to a university but never officially published, it depends on where it lives:
- If it’s in a public university repo with a proper license (like Creative Commons), you can usually use it based on those terms. For example, CC BY is usually fair game—even commercially.
- If it’s just hosted internally (like on a university intranet or library portal), then technically you can’t use it unless you’ve got permission from the author or the university.
- And yeah, if there’s no license at all, even if you can view or download it, that doesn’t mean you’re allowed to reuse it—especially in a chatbot, even if it’s for research.
Also, just being real—I've seen folks use content from academic papers they reviewed, just because they had access during the peer review process. But honestly, that’s a huge gray (or even red) zone. Peer review access doesn’t mean usage rights. You’re bound by confidentiality and IP terms, and using that content in something like a chatbot can be risky legally and ethically.
Hope that clears it up! Let me know more about your bot—happy to point you to some safe, license-friendly sources.
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