Copyright and Publicly-Funded Arts and Humanities Research: Identifying and Developing Sustainable Exploitation Models in the Digital Economy

In this paper, we report our findings from a pilot project, where we examined the relationships between copyright, publicly funded arts and humanities research, and research processes in the digital era. Our examination was based on case studies of six different AHRC-funded projects: three funded under the Digital Transformations theme, and three funded by one of the Knowledge Exchange Hubs for the Creative Economy, Research and Enterprise in the Arts and Creative Technologies (REACT). To study the six cases, we conducted semi-structured interviews with selected participants from each of these funded projects. We used this empirical data to address the following research questions: (1) How do researchers engage with copyright during the research process and in the production of creative works, and what copyright related challenges emerge? (2) How is researchers’ engagement with copyright affected by digitisation, collaboration, legislation, and government policies? (3) Does copyright provide benefits to researchers as they undertake publicly funded research? (4) What range of works is produced during research, what do researchers identify to be of value in their projects, and can any of the benefits provided by copyright be mapped onto these values?