Data and vendors
Datasets, research platforms and the AI features vendors are shipping.
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.
What you may do with an AI agent on licensed data
Most data licenses forbid putting the content into AI systems. Here is what that covers, what it leaves open, and how to keep working without risking your campus's access.
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. What each one means, what a good answer looks like and what to get in writing.
Automate SEC filings research with a coding agent, from EDGAR to a finished panel
The SEC's data service needs no key. Here are the endpoints, the instruction file, a skill and a scheduled run, plus linking to CRSP and Compustat through the wrds library.
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.
Should you still pay for call transcripts when an agent can do the parsing?
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.