by Katharina Rebay-Salisbury (Katharina.Rebay-Salisbury@oeaw.ac.at)
Continuing from the open data / open access debate in previous issues, I would like to draw attention to policies of obtaining image rights and permissions across Europe and beyond, and publishing images in the context of your own work, in journals, books, on blogs and other forms of new media, and last – but not least – in TEA. Most archaeologists work with images in one form or another; few bother to think about the implications. As editors of TEA, we are often asked to include images, and we often get surprised responses when we ask for copyright information.
At the start, it must be made clear that the location of the publisher determines which country’s law applies when it comes to using images. The European Archaeologist (TEA), as the newsletter of the European Association of Archaeologists, has its legal seat in the Czech Republic, and the server from which the website is broadcast is also located there. Czech law applies.
If you are publishing photos you have taken or images you have drawn, there are normally no problems. It becomes trickier when you would like to use images from sources other than your own. Whist in some countries, such as Germany, a reprint in scientific papers and scholarly books usually only requires the citation of the image, publishers in other countries, such as the UK, require a written permission from the copyright holder. The copyright holder is usually the person that made the image, but not always. (In this context: be careful when signing over the copyright to your images to publishers. Check your contracts!)
Publishing images of artefacts held in museums and collections sometimes require both the permission of the photographer and the keeper of the artefact. How exactly a museum can claim copyright to a piece of art made hundreds, if not thousands of years ago by unknown artists is unclear to me, but I want to believe that the publication fees support heritage preservation. My experience with writing a book about human images (K. Rebay-Salisbury, The Human Body in Early Iron Age Central Europe. Burial Practices and Images of the Hallstatt World. London: Routledge 2016) taught me several valuable lessons: 1. getting image permissions is a very time-consuming process. 2. It may cost money. 3. Many European colleagues are extremely helpful, but responses and their timeframes vary a lot. It is always good to have alternative options. Personal relationships help – many of these are fostered through membership in the EAA. 4. If in doubt, redraw. 5. Never work on images again.
Photographs of people, for instance your colleagues participating in workshops and conferences, are another topic to think about. Many of use like to take group pictures and use them in reports or put them online. Here, we need to consider the rights of the subject in addition to the rights of the photographer. Whether or not a permission to take a picture of a person has to be obtained, depends on where it is taken. In private places, it is expected that permission of the subject is obtained. In public places, this varies widely by country (see list in
this article). In Germany, for example, there is no permission required to take a picture of a person in a public place, but for publishing the picture, with or without commercial implications, a consent needs to be obtained. In the Netherlands, where the next EAA meting will be held, no permission is required from a person being photographed in a public place, nor for commercially using the picture.
Be clear that even if you think you are not using an image commercially, because after all, you are only publishing scholarly work, you may still be involved in a commercial process from which others (i.e. your publishers) benefit.
TEA is our association’s newsletter and not commercial, but our
European Journal of Archaeology is.
Copyrights protect works of authorship, but do consider releasing some of your work into the public domain. This is not only helpful to others, it also promotes your own work. In terms of images, also consider using images that already are in the public domain. Images from before 1923 should now all be in the public domain (with exceptions, see art held in museums above). The copyright normally expires 70 years after the death of the author, but again, there are variations of this rule, different from country to country. A good place to start are open file repositories such as
Wikimedia Commons, where users can upload and share files under different
Creative Commons licenses. There are different types of these licenses: some allow artwork to be shared, but not altered, some limit the license to non-commercial use. WikiCommons server are located in the United States, hence US law applies.
Working in the context of European, and indeed global, archaeology, it is becoming increasingly important to be aware that the copyright laws you are used to are not necessarily the same ones that apply to your publications, conference participations, and other dissemination outlets.
The ideal situation (the ‘pie in the sky’) is a world in which copyright rules and laws are the same everywhere, and perhaps it is worth working towards this aim. There are, however, so many unresolved issues in academic publishing more generally, from incompatible commercial and non-commercial models, to open access and shared data challenges, that for the moment it is unclear where we are heading. Staying informed might help to avoid problems, as we continue to rely on each other’s support and generosity in sharing archaeological research.
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