AI Essentials: From Tools to Strategy: A 2025 NISO Training Series
Scope
AI is already reshaping how research is created, reviewed, and shared and it’s moving faster than most of us can track. As AI capabilities continue to evolve, organizations face important decisions about how to engage, support, or set boundaries around its use.
This 8-week training series from NISO is designed for those interested in or actively assessing and responding to the evolving role of AI in scholarly communication. We’ll focus on practical tools, policy and compliance pressures, and the questions organizations or teams should be considering now. Each session combines grounded examples with strategic thinking, covering responsible use and research integrity to licensing, metadata, and long-term planning.
Whether you’re evaluating tools, developing guidance, or just getting started, this series offers actionable takeaways, practical examples, and an opportunity to build strategies for responsible and mission-aligned approaches to AI adoption.
Training Facilitator
Cynthia Hudson-Vitale, Associate Dean for Technology Strategy & Digital Services, Johns Hopkins University
Cynthia Hudson-Vitale serves as the Associate Dean for Technology Strategy & Digital Services at the Johns Hopkins where she oversees the development and implementation of a vision and strategy for information technology and digital services. She provides leadership for the Digital Research and Curation Center, Open Source Programs Office, Data Services, and Library Applications Group. In addition, she collaborates with colleagues across the institution and external partners to support data-intensive research, open science, and the discovery and preservation of digital assets to advance the mission of Johns Hopkins University.
Vitale comes from the Association of Research Libraries (ARL), where for the last three years she served as director of science policy and scholarship. During her time at ARL, Vitale provided strategic leadership and led international initiatives for digital collections, special and distinctive collections, university-led publishing, and research and scholarship across the top 127 US and Canadian research libraries. Her career in research libraries has been scholar-facing and technology- and data-intensive. She was the head of research informatics and publishing at the Pennsylvania State University Libraries, where she led a team focused on enhancing the technology-driven research and publishing capacity of faculty and students. Vitale also worked at Washington University in St. Louis.
Vitale’s areas of expertise includes information architecture, research data management and curation, open science, and scholarly communications. Vitale has been the principal investigator (PI) or co-PI on grants totaling millions of dollars in digital scholarship, data curation training and education, and data sharing. She holds a master’s degree in library and information science from the University of Missouri, and a bachelor’s degree in international relations and communications from Saint Louis University.
Course Duration and Dates
The series consists of eight (8) weekly segments, each lasting 90 minutes. Specific dates are:
- October 9, 16, 23, 30
- November 6, 13, 20 (No class on Thursday, November 27)
- December 4
Each session will be recorded and links to that archived recording will be disseminated to course registrants within 2 business days of the close of the specific session.
Event Sessions
Thursday, October 9, 2025, Session One: AI in Scholarly Communication: What’s Here, What’s Coming, What Matters
A grounding in the core capabilities of AI and how they’re already impacting scholarly communication. We’ll explore key concepts, real-world examples, and how to begin navigating the growing ecosystem of tools and services.
Thursday, October 16, 2025, Session Two: Integrity in an AI Era: From Research to Algorithms
This session takes a broad view of integrity, covering risks related to research fraud, ghostwriting, and paper mills, alongside issues of bias, transparency, and environmental cost in AI models themselves. We’ll also explore how organizations are responding with detection tools, community standards, and values-based decision-making.
Thursday, October 23, 2025, Session Three: AI Governance: Copyright, Licensing, and Compliance
AI raises complex questions around copyright, licensing, and fair use. This session unpacks current guidance and evolving mandates from OSTP, the EU, and publishers, with a focus on what organizations need to track and plan for.
Thursday, October 30, 2025, Session Four: AI in Scholarly Workflows and Infrastructure
From peer review triage and metadata enrichment to manuscript classification and repository integration, AI is increasingly embedded in the systems that support scholarship. This session explores how organizations are implementing AI into their operational workflows, what questions to ask about quality and transparency, and how shared infrastructure and standards play a role.
Thursday, November 6, 2025, Session Five: Supporting Researchers and Staff: Policy, Training, and Consultations
As scholars and staff explore AI tools for writing, review, and analysis, institutions are being asked to provide guidance. This session shares examples of emerging policies, instructional strategies, and consultation models for supporting responsible, effective use of AI across scholarly roles.
Thursday, November 13, 2025, Session Six: Planning for AI with Purpose and Alignment
As AI capabilities evolve, so do expectations for how institutions will respond. This session focuses on strategic considerations for adopting or expanding AI use in scholarly communication. We’ll explore how to align AI efforts with organizational values, assess opportunities and risks over different time horizons, and make thoughtful decisions even in a rapidly changing environment.
Thursday, November 20, 2025, Session Seven: Assessing Organizational Readiness
This session offers a practical framework for assessing your organization's capacity, policy landscape, data infrastructure, and stakeholder alignment. Whether you're just starting or already experimenting with AI tools, you’ll come away with a clearer view of where you are and what questions to ask next.
Thursday, December 4, 2025, Session Eight: Building a Roadmap
To close the series, we’ll turn insights into action. Participants will outline short-term steps for piloting, aligning, or scaling AI work in their own organizations and share plans with peers for feedback, refinement, and support.
Additional Information
Registration is non-transferable, and login via this Zoom link is exclusively accessible to the registered individual. As registrants, you can expect to receive a message containing your attendee sign-on credentials three business days prior to the scheduled Thursday session.
If you have not received your instructions by the day before an event, please contact NISO headquarters for assistance via email (nisohq@niso.org).
Registrants for an event may cancel participation and receive a refund (less $30.00) if the notice of cancellation is received at NISO HQ (nisohq@niso.org) one full week prior to the event date. If received less than 7 days before, no refund will be provided.
All events follow the NISO Code of Conduct. More information can be found here.
Broadcast Platform
NISO uses the Zoom platform for purposes of broadcasting our live events. Zoom provides apps for a variety of computing devices (tablets, laptops, etc.) To view the broadcast, you will need a device that supports the Zoom app. Attendees may also choose to listen just to audio on their phones. Sign-on credentials include the necessary dial-in numbers, if that is your preference. Once notified of their availability, recordings may be viewed from the Zoom platform.