Draft agreement · TKA/v0.3 · Secretariat copy
Comment period closed 16 October 2026
AI has become the fastest-growing channel through which people encounter knowledge — built on everyone's content, largely without attribution and without compensation. The Accord is a founding agreement under which publishers, libraries, learned societies, authors and standards bodies align on four terms. It does not oppose AI. It invites AI in, on terms the alliance sets rather than terms the platforms assume.
The four terms below are the whole of the Accord. Each is amendable by public comment; each amendment is recorded in the register against the comment that caused it.
A response drawing on a signatory's work identifies that work — at component level where the structure allows — in a form the reader can act on. The Accord distinguishes proof that an access occurred from proof that a passage originated in a given work, and attaches obligations to each separately.
The reader is returned to a route to the source: the holding library, the publisher, or a purchase path. Routing conveys institutional entitlement only. No clause requires disclosure of an individual reader's identity, and routing that resolves to an unpassable wall does not satisfy the term.
Use is metered and compensated on auditable terms. The Accord deliberately does not define what counts as a use — that definition belongs to the standards community that already maintains usage measurement, and the draft names it as the normative reference rather than establishing a parallel vocabulary.
Rights holders can see how their works are used, in a form they can verify independently of the platforms being measured. Transparency obligations run to usage reporting only — never to the commercial terms a signatory has negotiated.
Signature in principle is an expression of alignment with the four terms. It creates no financial obligation, no exclusivity, no requirement to adopt any particular technology, and no commitment to any commercial arrangement. Terms are severable: a signatory may adopt attribution, routing and transparency without adopting compensation. Signatories may withdraw at any time, and the register records withdrawals as openly as it records signatures.
The draft is at v0.3 and open for public comment until 16 October 2026. Every comment received is published in full, with the reasoning for how it was handled — including the ones that were declined. After the comment period closes, signatories will be convened to constitute the Trusted Knowledge Alliance and elect its Council. From that point the document belongs to them, not to its drafters.
Commenting implies no endorsement. See the comment and attribution policy.
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