Data and vendors
Datasets, research platforms and the AI features vendors are shipping.
Automate SEC filings research with a coding agent, from EDGAR to a finished panel
One typed goal makes Claude Code pull SEC filings, build a firm-quarter panel, run the checks and commit the result. Auto mode and /goal keep it working until the checks pass.
Make your data pull something an agent can run
Automation starts with the stage that has the clearest pass or fail. Turn the data pull into one command with checks and a manifest.
Using an AI agent on licensed data without risking your campus's access
Most data licenses forbid putting the content into AI systems. An agent can still write and repair the whole pipeline if the licensed rows never enter its context.
Negotiating an AI contract for beginners: retention, zero data retention, training and models
Four clauses decide whether an AI service is safe for research data. They are retention, training, access and model, and a sales answer on any of them counts for nothing until it is in the contract.
Why data vendors are scared, and how to deal with them as a researcher
Their interface is worth less every month and they cannot see what your agent does. That gives you more room at renewal than you have had in twenty years.
The standalone academic data platform is running out of reasons to exist
AI assistants now ship with vendor data inside and recognize the licenses a user already holds. The query screen is the part of the platform that does not survive.
AI has arrived for finance research, and data vendors cannot police it
Agents now operate a computer better than the human baseline on the standard test. Licenses forbid most AI use of data, and almost none of it can be detected.
If the platform forbids agents, build the dataset yourself from the source
Filings, financial statements and earnings calls were public before any vendor packaged them. An agent can go back to the source, and the tools to do it are free.
Keep paying for call transcripts, but only for the history, the identifiers and the rights
An agent now does the cleaning, splitting and scoring that used to justify a data budget. What it cannot produce is history, identifiers and the right to use the text.
Researchers are using AI against the rules, because being left behind is worse
At a major 2026 conference, more than one in five reviewers who were told not to use an LLM used one anyway. The fear driving that is rational.
The one public review of WRDS's Ask AI chatbot finds a lookup tool with a six-question limit
Librarians in Singapore tested the beta and found it useful for locating variables, unreliable on first try and capped at six questions a session.