Open Licensing Models in the Cultural Heritage Sector
Summary
The purpose of this study is to advance understanding of how open licensing is being used in CHIs in practice and to enable information sharing about potential strategies. The authors do not endorse any singular approach – the findings reflect responses by a wide range of institutions in their own local contexts.
CHIs face numerous challenges in fulfilling their public mandates to preserve and promote access to culture. Among these challenges, securing access to resources to sustain their activities is paramount. While institutions are funded in many different ways, from government grants to private endowments, CHIs all face questions in relation to the role their digital collections can play in confronting the funding challenge, either directly or indirectly.
The aim of this study is to characterise different approaches to open licensing of digital cultural heritage and assess the role that these approaches are playing for CHIs and their various funding models. We adopt a multiple case study methodology to gather insight about approaches taken in differently situated CHIs (museums, archives, libraries and galleries) in 4 distinct jurisdictions (UK, EU, USA and Brazil).
Funders
Team Leads
Bartolomeo Meletti
Principal Investigator
Kristofer Erickson
Co-Investigator
Aline Iramina
Researcher
Victoria Stobo
Researcher
Duration
2024-25
Outputs:
Meletti, B., Erickson, K., Iramina, A., & Stobo, V. (2025). Open Licensing Models in the Cultural Heritage Sector. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15728474
BRAID Roundtable on Openness and AI in culture, arts and humanities (Ada Lovelace Institute, London, 24 November 2025). Bartolomeo Meletti shared the study with the participants of this roundtable organised by BRAID fellows Anna-Maria Sichani, Paula Westenberger and Nick Bryan-Kinns.
Guest lecture for the University of Groningen’s LLM in Technology Law and Innovation (online, 7 October 2025). Bartolomeo Meletti presented and discussed the study with the students of the IP and Innovation course.
European Commission (online, 25 September 2025). The study was presented at the webinar ‘Copyright law – Key takeaways for all cultural heritage, research, and education institutions: best practices, case examples and learning in practice’, organised by the European Commission as part of their awareness campaign ‘Understanding copyright – advice for public interest institutions’.
Erickson, K., Meletti, B., and Iramina, A. (2025) Between a rock and a hard place? Open IP licensing models in the cultural heritage sector. The paper was accepted for the European Policy for Intellectual Property (EPIP) 2025 conference but had to be withdrawn due to last-minute health issues: https://www.create.ac.uk/blog/2025/09/08/epip-2025-making-connections-in-antwerp/
The Economics of Open. Launch webinar hosted by Creative Commons (24 June 2025): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=csc1XyD8Jck&ab_channel=CreativeCommons
The Economics of Open: Can Open Licensing Be a Sustainable Strategy for Cultural Heritage Institutions? (2 July 2025). Creative Commons: We Like to Share. Medium. https://medium.com/creative-commons-we-like-to-share/the-economics-of-open-can-open-licensing-be-a-sustainable-strategy-for-cultural-heritage-305dfa7edbcb