Nonprofit in formation
The next generation of content that truly adapts to the reader.
Open standards for adaptive, AI-enabled book experiences, with rights-holder permissions that unlock new ways to read, learn, and engage.
Open standards. Protected content.
“Open” describes our standards: anyone may read and implement them. It never means free use of anyone’s content.
A clean path from EPUB. New capabilities for the age of AI, with permission.
Key objectives
- Literacy for every reader: in every market, at every age.
- Added value for every written work: for readers and for rights holders.
Across trade, education, libraries, and professional and corporate training, and always with the specific permission of rights holders.
Our mission
Content that adapts to the reader, with permission.
Open Adaptive Editions (OAE) is the next generation of content that truly adapts to the reader, with rights-holder permissions that enable new use models, added value for readers, and new value for rights holders.
OAE is a standards organization, now in formation, dedicated to the development and promotion of immersive and engaging experiences based on book content, and all that AI can unlock, with the permission of rights holders. The work of OAE will foster and promote the development of open standards for adaptive, AI-enabled reading applications and products that will benefit creators of content, makers of reading systems and consumers.
Unlocking content through adaptive permissions will be a milestone for the value of every written work. It will enable educational outcomes for all readers, letting each person experience a story, a training course or any other content in the way that best suits their needs and preferences. That can be a major boon for literacy at every age: for readers who need support in English or another language, for students who learn best in different ways, and for everyone who wants to use their own voice to guide their reading and experience. Every book can become a door, with guidance along the way whenever a reader needs it.
Everything OAE does is based on supporting copyright law. Every use of a work, whether AI questions and answers, summaries, translation, audio, or an immersive feature, requires specific permission from the work’s rights holders and owners. Where no permission has been given, the use does not happen.
Our mission is “to create the next generation of immersive and engaging experiences based on book content and all that AI can unlock with rights holder permission; everything is based on supporting copyright law, and all uses with specific permissions from the rights holders and owners.”
Adapts to the reader
Every book can become a door.
With guidance along the way whenever a reader needs it, and only with the rights holder’s permission.
Literacy at every age starts with content that meets each reader where they are. Every adaptation below is enabled only when the edition’s permissions record shows that its rights holders have specifically allowed it.
Reading level
The same work, presented at the reading level that suits the reader.
Needs permission for:
reading_levelLanguage
The work in the reader’s language.
Needs permission for:
translationFormat and voice
Read, listen, or both, in a voice the rights holder has approved.
Needs permission for:
audio_voiceAccessibility needs
Adaptations for differences in vision, hearing, cognition and mobility.
Needs permission for:
accessibility_adaptationInteractive and immersive layers
Exercises, guided activities, scenes and worlds built from the work.
Needs permission for:
interactive, immersivePermissioned AI help
Questions and answers, explanations and summaries grounded in the text.
Needs permission for:
ai_qa, summary
Core principles
Five principles behind every draft.
- 1
Permission first
Specific, explicit consent from rights holders and owners for every use. No permission, no feature.
- 2
Respect for copyright law
The standards support copyright; they never work around it or treat a work as free to use.
- 3
Open, interoperable standards
Published specifications anyone can implement, so a permission declared once is understood by every reading system.
- 4
Transparency about versions and provenance
Readers can see which version they hold, when it was verified, and who authorized each experience.
- 5
Reader trust and accessibility
Plain-language answers, honest labels, and designs that accommodate differences in language, culture, reading and learning styles, and individual abilities.
Pillar one · Rights and permissions
Every experience names who allowed it.
The draft standard proposes a simple, machine-readable way for an edition to declare which rights holder granted which specific uses, with scope, territory, term and attribution. A reading system checks that declaration before it turns a feature on. If no permission covers the use, the feature stays off.
Uses a rights holder can grant, one by one
- AI questions and answers over the text
- Summaries
- Translation
- Audio and voice
- Interactive and immersive features
- Excerpts
Each use needs its own specific permission. Granting one never implies another.
Pillar two · Trustworthy editions
Readers can see which version they hold, and when it was verified.
Every version of an edition keeps a permanent address that is never rewritten, a /latest address points to the newest one, and a small public version-check record states the current version, what changed, and when its details were last verified. The QR code printed in each book resolves against that record.
This part of the model is already in use: the A&A AI SafeStep™ guidebooks are published this way.
Why open standards matter
One way to ask, one way to answer.
AI can turn a book into a conversation, a translation, a performance or an immersive world. Each of those uses belongs to the people who own the work. Without a shared way to record what they have allowed, every platform invents its own, and rights holders lose sight of how their work is used.
Open, interoperable standards let a rights holder state a permission once and have every participating reading system honor it, let readers see who authorized what they are using, and let libraries and educators rely on editions that say plainly what they are.
For authors and rights holders
Decide, use by use, what may be built from your work, and see that decision respected.
For publishers and reading systems
One permission format to check, instead of a different arrangement for every platform.
For readers, libraries and educators
Experiences that are authorized, labeled honestly, and accessible.
Take part in the first draft.
Draft 0.1 is a working draft for discussion. It should be shaped by the authors, rights holders and readers it serves.