How to protect your research
To protect your research, put a dated public record on it early. Post a preprint with a DOI on arXiv, bioRxiv, SSRN or Zenodo, link it to your ORCID iD, and choose a licence such as CC BY so the terms of reuse are clear. Copyright covers your writing, not your ideas, so if the work is an invention, speak to a patent attorney before you publish.
Then sign the paper, the dataset and the code on the Trust Identity Protocol (TIP) by The AI Lab, a free, open standard. Each one is bound to your verified identity with a timestamp and a fingerprint, so a reworded or AI-paraphrased copy can be compared against your signed original. TIP began because its inventor, Dinesh Mendhe, found research papers built on other people's ideas with no credit to the people who had them.
Every option, honestly
What each way of protecting your research does, and where it stops
These work together. Use more than one, and read the last column for each, including ours.
| Option | What it does | Where it stops |
|---|---|---|
| Preprint with a DOI (arXiv, bioRxiv, SSRN, Zenodo) | Publishes a dated public version of your work with a permanent identifier. | Dates the version you post, not your earlier drafts, data or notebooks. |
| ORCID iD | Links your publications to you across journals and repositories. | Identifies you as an author. It does not timestamp or fingerprint the work. |
| Licence (CC BY and others) | States how others may reuse your work and requires credit. | Sets terms. It does not detect misuse. |
| Patent | Protects an invention, which copyright does not. | Expensive, slow and must usually be filed before you publish. |
| Plagiarism checkers (iThenticate and others) | Find overlapping text in manuscripts submitted to journals. | Run by journals after the fact, and weak against paraphrasing. |
| Trust Identity Protocol (TIP) by The AI Lab | Signs the work to your verified identity and records when it was made, how it was made (Original Human, AI-Assisted, AI-Generated or Mixed) and a fingerprint of the content, in a public record anyone can check for free. | Does not stop copying or AI training, and is not copyright registration. It is evidence of who made the work and whether it has changed. |
Step by step
How to protect your research, in order
- Sign drafts, datasets and code on TIP as you produce them, so the record shows the work existed and who made it.
- Post a preprint with a DOI and link it to your ORCID iD.
- Choose a licence that requires credit, such as CC BY.
- If the work is an invention, speak to a patent attorney before publishing anything.
- Cite your TIP records and DOIs in talks, grant applications and correspondence, so priority is easy to check.
About TIP
What the Trust Identity Protocol is
The Trust Identity Protocol (TIP) is an open standard from The AI Lab for proving who made a piece of content and whether it has changed. A person verifies once and gets a TIP-ID. Each time they publish, their own device signs the work with a post-quantum signature (ML-DSA-65, NIST FIPS 204), and the TIP Network records the signature, the time, an origin label and a fingerprint of the content. Anyone can check a record for free, with no account.
TIP does not stop copying, does not stop AI training and does not decide whether content is true. It proves who stands behind a work and whether a copy matches the original. It is governed in the open by the AI Trust Council, and the specification is public on GitHub. Signed work is called a Verifiable Asset.
Questions
Questions people ask
How do I protect my research from being stolen?
Create dated public records early. A preprint with a DOI, an ORCID-linked profile and a TIP record signed to your verified identity all show the work was yours and when. For inventions, file a patent before publishing. None of these stops someone reusing an idea, but together they make your priority easy for anyone to verify.
How do I prove I had the idea first?
Copyright does not protect ideas, so priority rests on dated evidence. A preprint, a dated dataset, lab notebooks and a TIP record made before anyone else published are the strongest evidence. TIP records are signed and timestamped and can be checked by anyone for free.
Can AI plagiarise my paper?
AI tools can paraphrase a paper closely enough to slip past text-matching checks. TIP records a fingerprint of your signed original, so a reworded copy can be compared against it, and the signed record shows who published first.
Is a preprint enough to protect my research?
A preprint dates the version you post and is widely accepted as evidence of priority. It does not cover your earlier drafts, data or code, and it does not verify who you are. Signing those on TIP fills that gap.
Does TIP replace copyright registration for my research?
No. Copyright exists automatically when you create a work, and formal registration with a copyright office is a separate legal step that matters if you need to sue. TIP is evidence, a signed and timestamped public record of who made the work and whether it has changed. It supports a copyright claim. It does not replace one.
Is TIP free?
Individuals can get a TIP-ID and start registering work for free at vp.theailab.org, and checking any record is free for everyone with no account. Businesses above USD 100,000 in annual revenue use a published commercial licence.
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