Silverchair launches platform to connect publishers with AI research assistants
Silverchair has launched a six-month pilot of Research Bridge, a shared Model Context Protocol (MCP) channel designed to give independent scholarly publishers a route into AI-powered research assistants.
The initiative aims to enable publishers to make their content available within emerging AI research workflows while retaining control over content, customer relationships, access rights and future business models.
The pilot brings together publishers from a range of disciplines, including Royal Society Publishing, the American Association for Cancer Research, the American Diabetes Association, the Royal Society of Chemistry, Rockefeller University Press, Portland Press, and the Association for Materials Protection and Performance.
The company says Research Bridge has been developed in response to changing patterns of scholarly discovery and consumption, with researchers increasingly using AI tools to discover, read and synthesise published literature.
Rather than requiring individual publishers to build their own infrastructure or accept the integration and commercial terms of third-party providers, Silverchair is positioning Research Bridge as shared infrastructure operated on behalf of its publisher clients.
The service provides access to entitled content from participating publishers through a single connector, while allowing publishers to continue using existing infrastructure such as subscriber entitlements and maintaining their relationships with end users.
Will Schweitzer, Silverchair CEO, said: “Scholarly publishers have always done their best work when they make their own decisions about their content and their communities, then come together around shared infrastructure that serves everyone.
“Researchers increasingly meet published work inside AI assistants, and connecting with them in the tools they already use is where much of the value now sits. We built Research Bridge so publishers can reach the agentic channel on their own terms, with the technology, data, and support to experiment, build new products, and maintain their connection with their audiences. We’re developing this to be sustainable over the long term.
“Research Bridge maintains provenance, keeps each publisher’s brand front and centre, delivers full context rather than isolated chunks, relays content safely, and directs readers back to the version of record. Every publisher who participates makes the channel more valuable for the others. No publisher should have to give up control to participate in the future of scholarly communication.”