Digital guide: working with open licences/Overview

The National Lottery Heritage Fund’s licensing requirement supports open access to the rich heritage in the UK and the exciting possibilities of digital transformation in the cultural sector. All materials created or digitised with grant funding are subject to this requirement, which was updated in September 2020.

Open licences and public domain dedications are tools that give the public permission to use materials typically protected by copyright and other laws.

Grantees agree to share:

• Digital outputs under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International licence (CC BY 4.0).
• Code, metadata and media generated during the reproduction of public domain works under a Creative Commons 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication tool (CC0 1.0).
• As before, grantees must make these materials publicly available online for at least five years after the project end date.

If your project was submitted or awarded funding before September 2020, you can either adopt the new open licensing requirement or continue to work under the previous licensing requirement.

Who is this guide for?

This guide explains open licensing and provides a step-by-step approach to the open licensing requirement for each stage of your project.

It is aimed at The National Lottery Heritage Fund applicants and grantees but contains useful information for anyone who supports open access to cultural heritage.

Please note this guidance does not constitute legal advice.

Authors

This guide has been produced for The National Lottery Heritage Fund by Dr Andrea Wallace and Dr Mathilde Pavis as part of our Digital Skills for Heritage initiative.

Andrea and Mathilde are both Senior Lecturers in Law at the University of Exeter, with expertise in Intellectual Property and digital culture.