Readiness means that a defined buyer can evaluate and receive an authorised, usable product under understood obligations. “AI-ready” without a schema, acceptance criteria and rights boundary is a marketing description.
A practical release record should identify unique items, source, dates, language, content type, version, rights cohort, restrictions and known quality issues. Keep the evidence location and reviewer attached to any rights status. Document missing fields rather than populating them with guesses.
The Datasheets for Datasets research proposes documenting composition, collection and intended use. Apply that transparency principle to the commercial release; it does not certify ownership or commercial demand. Gebru et al. — Datasheets for Datasets
Agree a pilot acceptance sheet with the buyer: parse success, duplicate treatment, date accuracy, provenance linkage, excluded-material checks, update process and task performance. Set numeric thresholds only after both sides understand the sample and failure cost. Preserve original files and transformation logs so an error can be traced. A content owner should not commission a large annotation programme until the use case and required outputs are clear.