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For reasons explained throughout this report, this research scope is limited to the open access policies and practices around collections in the public domain. It does not address the access parameters around in-copyright works and collections, as these are defined by national copyright laws and controlled by the works’ rightsholders, which is rarely the institution. This report studies access to materials for which the institution claims to be, and sometimes is, the rightsholder.

Around this, the research cast a wide net to understand the scope of digital collections and policies that UK GLAMs publish on their own websites and external platforms (e.g., Art UK, Europeana, Flickr Commons, Wikimedia Commons).

refers to Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums and is used as shorthand to refer to any national, regional or local cultural heritage institution or similar organisation.

refers to many individuals or groups including members of the general public, educators, researchers, GLAM staff, and even GLAMs themselves, located in the UK or elsewhere.

refers to an item, information or output. Sometimes a work requires creative input and attracts copyright protection; when it does not, the work is in the public domain from the moment of creation.

refers to the legal conditions under which the work is provided.

or carries the meaning of “open” as defined by the Open Knowledge Foundation: “Open means anyone can freely access, use, modify, and share for any purpose (subject, at most, to requirements that preserve provenance and openness).” Under international open access statements, materials must be made available for commercial reuse to qualify as open.

conveys an absence of copyright or similar restrictions on use. For the purposes of this report, ‘public domain’ should not be equivocated or conflated with terms like ‘published’ or ‘publicly available’ in reference to digital media. Also note that references to ‘open’ can include knowledge and materials in the public domain since anyone can freely access, use, modify, and share them for any purpose.

are used to mark public domain media. These are not licences, because no rights exist to support the application of a licence (or rights have been waived).

denotes some rights have been released, but the rights to prohibit modification or commercial use remain reserved.

and/or refers to the range of content produced during the digitisation and management of physical collections, and may include data, metadata, paradata, text and images (i.e., digital surrogates).

A Culture of Copyright