ZAIA is Zendy’s domain-specific AI research assistant designed to support academic discovery, exploration, and synthesis of scholarly literature. It uses Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) to answer research questions by retrieving and citing content from a curated mix of open-access sources and paywalled metadata accessed through direct licensing agreements with publishers.
In March 2025, Zendy introduced a RAG-based revenue-sharing model for ZAIA, ensuring that publishers are fairly compensated when their licensed content is referenced in AI-generated responses. Compensation is transparently calculated based on reference usage, enabling consent-driven, attributable, and sustainable AI use of scholarly content.
ZAIA supports advanced search and retrieval using keywords, titles, authors, publication names, ISSNs, ISBNs, and DOIs. Responses include inline references, multilingual querying, and context-aware explanations grounded in peer-reviewed literature.
Benefits & outcomes
- Ethical and transparent use of licensed academic content by AI
- Revenue returned to publishers based on reference-level usage
- Reference-backed AI answers suitable for academic research
- Improved discoverability of both open-access and paywalled content
- Multilingual research support and advanced identifier-based search
- Ensures access to up-to-date content, including corrections and retractions
Notes & quotes
“This is a positive shift for the academic publishing industry. For the first time, AI is being used to drive revenue back to publishers instead of bypassing them.” – Kamran Kardan, Co-founder, Zendy
Publisher / company: Zendy (developed by Knowledge E)
Date of case study: 14/04/2025
Source: https://zendy.io/zaia