{"schema_version":1,"experiment_id":"eoa_inverse_innovation_exp11_mechanism_context_external20_20260804","research_id":"eoa_inverse_innovation_exp11_external_scrutiny_20260804","cell_id":"deadweight_loss_reduction__art_aesthetics","opaque_id":"deadweight_loss_reduction__art_aesthetics__B","search_lanes":{"direct_problem":{"queries":["museum public domain images reproduction fees permissions deter reuse open access study","museum image licensing fees public domain artworks barriers reuse empirical","museum open access policy public domain high resolution images fees permissions pilot impact reuse","image licensing cultural heritage transaction costs permission fees public domain museum"],"source_ids":["SRC1","SRC2","SRC3","SRC6"],"no_result_note":null},"closest_prior_art":{"queries":["museum open access business model image licensing revenue costs study 2004 2013","Kristin Kelly Images of Works of Art in Museum Collections Promise of Open Access 2013 report","museum open access eligibility workflow rights review sensitive cultural materials tiered access collections","museum open access pilot phased collection measure downloads reuse revenue staff workload"],"source_ids":["SRC2","SRC4","SRC5"],"no_result_note":null},"historical_terminology":{"queries":["Tanner 2004 reproduction charging models rights policy digital images American art museums report","older museum photograph permissions reproduction rights slide rental picture library fees scholarly publishing","Art Museum Images in Scholarly Publishing fee-free images rights and reproductions","image reproduction rights museum differential charging educational commercial use"],"source_ids":["SRC1","SRC2"],"no_result_note":null},"products_practices_standards":{"queries":["official museum open access standard public domain digitised artworks CC0 rights statements IIIF","Europeana Public Domain Charter digitisation public domain no new rights official","EU Directive 2019/790 Article 14 works visual art public domain faithful reproductions official","OpenGLAM principles cultural heritage sensitive collections traditional knowledge open access safeguards"],"source_ids":["SRC4","SRC5","SRC7","SRC8"],"no_result_note":null},"non_english_regional":{"queries":["museo immagini pubblico dominio tariffa riproduzione autorizzazione canone riuso","musée images domaine public redevance reproduction autorisation haute définition réutilisation","museo imágenes dominio público tarifa reproducción permiso alta resolución reutilización","museum afbeeldingen publiek domein hergebruik kosten toestemming hoge resolutie Rijksmuseum"],"source_ids":["SRC5","SRC6","SRC7"],"no_result_note":null},"composition_subproblems":{"queries":["museum open access eligibility workflow rights review sensitive cultural materials tiered access collections","museum open access pilot phased collection measure downloads reuse revenue staff workload","museum digitized collections public domain culturally sensitive images access protocols TK Labels","museum image licensing demand abandonment fees publisher illustrations empirical survey"],"source_ids":["SRC1","SRC2","SRC4","SRC5","SRC8"],"no_result_note":"No retained source documented the full combination of applicant-level abandonment measurement, randomized or phased treatment, preregistered distributional thresholds, and automatic rollback."}},"sources":[{"source_id":"SRC1","title":"Reproduction Charging Models & Rights Policy for Digital Images in American Art Museums: A Mellon Foundation Funded Study","url":"https://kclpure.kcl.ac.uk/portal/en/publications/reproduction-charging-models-amp-rights-policy-for-digital-images","publisher":"King's College London","date_or_year":"2004","source_type":"PRIMARY_RESEARCH","language":"English","claims_supported":["Surveyed 100 US art museums and interviewed personnel at 20 museums about imaging, licensing, pricing, and governance.","Rights-and-reproduction revenue was generally small relative to other museum income, and interviewed museums spent as much as or more than they received from these services.","Formal service evaluation and fixed success criteria were rare; the report recommended measurable evaluation and centralized authority.","Fees were commonly differentiated by use, while pricing was often based on perceived market rates rather than complete service costs."]},{"source_id":"SRC2","title":"Images of Works of Art in Museum Collections: The Experience of Open Access—A Study of 11 Museums","url":"https://www.clir.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/pub157.pdf","publisher":"Council on Library and Information Resources","date_or_year":"June 2013","source_type":"PRIMARY_RESEARCH","language":"English","claims_supported":["Studied eleven US and UK museums using models ranging from mediated fee waivers to immediate high-resolution self-service downloads.","Senior leadership or a museum director was an important champion for every mature open-access approach studied.","Museums reported increased traffic and interest after opening images, while one museum experienced a 40 percent request and workload increase and most reported stable or lower licensing revenue.","The study found staged implementation, eligibility distinctions, charging for new photography, and operational concerns about metadata, staff capacity, inappropriate use, and loss of usage tracking.","Most evidence about downstream image use was observational or anecdotal rather than controlled, applicant-level causal evidence."]},{"source_id":"SRC3","title":"Digital Reuse and Online Availability of Visual Artworks","url":"https://experts.illinois.edu/en/publications/digital-reuse-and-online-availability-of-visual-artworks/","publisher":"Information Economics and Policy / University of Illinois Experts","date_or_year":"2026 (issue dated December 2026)","source_type":"PRIMARY_RESEARCH","language":"English","claims_supported":["A regression-discontinuity and cross-country study found public-domain status associated with approximately 19 percent greater image availability on Useum.","An artwork image appeared on 76 additional web pages on average; reuse was higher for public-domain works, although statistical significance held only in some specifications.","Museum-sourced images of public-domain works had higher average resolution than comparable protected works.","The study concerns copyright status and online availability, not the causal effect of museum reproduction fees or permission workflows on applicant abandonment."]},{"source_id":"SRC4","title":"The Met Makes Its Images of Public-Domain Artworks Freely Available through New Open Access Policy","url":"https://www.metmuseum.org/press-releases/open-access-2017-news","publisher":"The Metropolitan Museum of Art","date_or_year":"February 7, 2017","source_type":"FIRST_PARTY_PRODUCT","language":"English","claims_supported":["The Met made more than 375,000 images of public-domain artworks freely available under CC0 for scholarly and commercial use without permission fees.","The policy excludes works affected by copyright uncertainty, privacy or publicity, third-party ownership, artist/donor/lender restrictions, or inadequate digital-image quality.","The director and museum administration are identifiable institutional authorizers.","The operational package closely matches zero-fee standardized access gated by rights and other restrictions."]},{"source_id":"SRC5","title":"Informatie- en Databeleid Rijksmuseum","url":"https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/policy/informatie-en-databeleid","publisher":"Rijksmuseum","date_or_year":"Current policy, accessed 2026-08-04","source_type":"OFFICIAL_GUIDANCE","language":"Dutch","claims_supported":["Since 2011–2012 the Rijksmuseum has treated photographs, including high-resolution variants, of collection objects no longer under copyright as public assets.","The museum applies Public Domain Mark or CC0 and seeks to facilitate reuse through downloadable, standardized data services.","The policy withholds or limits information when disclosure could harm collection, building, or personal safety, violate privacy, or conflict with third-party contracts.","The policy incorporates Indigenous data-governance concerns through the CARE Principles and identifies museum-wide governance responsibilities."]},{"source_id":"SRC6","title":"Faire une utilisation commerciale d’une reproduction","url":"https://www.bnf.fr/fr/faire-une-utilisation-commerciale-dune-reproduction","publisher":"Bibliothèque nationale de France","date_or_year":"Current guidance, accessed 2026-08-04","source_type":"OFFICIAL_GUIDANCE","language":"French","claims_supported":["Commercial use of existing BnF reproductions, including public-domain documents, requires authorization and a use fee separate from technical reproduction charges.","Listed fees include €65 for an interior book page, €180 for a cover, and €75 for web, audiovisual, or exhibition use, with negotiated charges for some products.","Noncommercial and university research publications are generally free with source attribution, but school publications and commercial databases are excluded from that exemption.","This is direct regional evidence that fee-and-permission wedges persist even where underlying materials may be public domain."]},{"source_id":"SRC7","title":"Directive (EU) 2019/790 on Copyright and Related Rights in the Digital Single Market","url":"https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/dir/2019/790/oj?locale=en","publisher":"European Union, EUR-Lex","date_or_year":"June 7, 2019","source_type":"OFFICIAL_STANDARD","language":"English","claims_supported":["Article 14 requires that faithful reproductions of public-domain visual art receive no new copyright or related rights unless the reproduction is itself original.","The rule constrains copyright claims over faithful digital surrogates but does not by itself resolve every national administrative-fee, property, contract, privacy, or cultural-stewardship issue.","Jurisdiction-specific legal review remains necessary before a museum changes access policy."]},{"source_id":"SRC8","title":"What Are the Barriers to Open Culture?","url":"https://creativecommons.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/3.Final-Barriers-Report_compressed.pdf","publisher":"Creative Commons","date_or_year":"July 22, 2022","source_type":"SECONDARY_RESEARCH","language":"English","claims_supported":["Expert interviews and prior research identify money, people, and policy—including licensing-revenue fears, staff limitations, risk aversion, and rights claims over digital copies—as barriers to open cultural collections.","Open access itself incurs digitization, infrastructure, data-preparation, and rights-management costs.","The report treats culturally sensitive and Indigenous materials as requiring responsible, collaborative, and equitable safeguards rather than automatic release.","The report documents broad OpenGLAM adoption and implementation concerns but does not evaluate a randomized, time-limited museum pilot."]}],"problem_evidence":{"status":"PARTLY_SUPPORTED","finding":"The core problem is externally supported: museums and national institutions maintain reproduction fees, differentiated pricing, and permission processes; older empirical studies found such services costly and often weak revenue centers; and newer evidence associates public-domain status with greater availability and downstream reuse. Open-access transitions also produced increased traffic, downloads, requests, and workload. However, none of the eight retained sources directly measured whether artists, educators, or small publishers abandoned otherwise feasible projects after encountering a fee or discretionary approval.","source_ids":["SRC1","SRC2","SRC3","SRC6"],"uncertainty":"The evidence connects legal/access status with availability and reuse, but it does not isolate museum fee and approval effects from copyright status, digitization selection, discoverability, image quality, or user composition. Applicant-level abandonment and substitution remain unverified."},"adopter_evidence":{"status":"SUPPORTED","finding":"An identifiable adopter and authorizer exists: museum directors, trustees, senior executive groups, or governing bodies set image-access policy, with implementation by rights, collections, legal, finance, technology, and curatorial staff. The Met and Rijksmuseum provide concrete first-party examples, while the eleven-museum study found senior-level sponsorship critical.","source_ids":["SRC2","SRC4","SRC5","SRC6"],"uncertainty":"Authority varies by institution. Public or state institutions may also be constrained by legislation, administrative charging rules, donor contracts, or third-party rights, so a local authority audit is required."},"implementation_evidence":{"status":"PARTLY_SUPPORTED","finding":"The main intervention—eligibility-gated, no-fee, standardized self-service access to high-resolution public-domain images—is already operational at major museums and appeared in multiple forms across the eleven-museum study. Existing implementations distinguish protected works, retain charges for new photography or special services, and address privacy, contractual, safety, and community concerns. Observed outcomes include more traffic and requests, possible workload increases, and stable or lower licensing revenue. The proposed randomized or phased 90-day design, applicant-abandonment outcome, distributional incidence measures, preregistered thresholds, and automatic rollback were not found as a combined implementation.","source_ids":["SRC1","SRC2","SRC4","SRC5","SRC8"],"uncertainty":"Existing outcome evidence is predominantly case-study or observational evidence and is vulnerable to simultaneous website redesigns, selection effects, changing copyright status, and incomplete downstream-use tracking."},"prior_art":{"disposition":"ESTABLISHED_PRACTICE","closest_analogues":[{"name":"Open-access image programs across eleven US and UK museums","source_ids":["SRC2"],"same_problem":true,"same_causal_lever":true,"overlap":"The study documents museums replacing mediated, fee-based rights-and-reproduction processes with free or fee-waived access, including immediate high-resolution self-service downloads, staged implementation, leadership authorization, metadata preparation, revenue consideration, and workload monitoring.","remaining_difference":"It does not document a randomized or preregistered time-limited trial measuring applicant abandonment, affected-party incidence, complaint thresholds, and automatic rollback."},{"name":"The Met Open Access CC0 program","source_ids":["SRC4"],"same_problem":true,"same_causal_lever":true,"overlap":"The Met provides zero-fee, permission-free reuse of high-resolution images of public-domain works and excludes copyright-uncertain, privacy-affected, third-party-restricted, or technically unsuitable assets.","remaining_difference":"The retained source describes a permanent policy rollout, not a reversible controlled pilot with baseline abandonment measurement, distributional review, or threshold-based rollback."},{"name":"Rijksmuseum information and data policy","source_ids":["SRC5"],"same_problem":true,"same_causal_lever":true,"overlap":"The Rijksmuseum treats high-resolution images of copyright-expired objects as public assets, applies PDM or CC0, uses standardized data services, and retains privacy, safety, contract, and Indigenous-governance safeguards.","remaining_difference":"The policy is established institutional practice rather than an experimental fee-wedge diagnostic with a short evaluation period and explicit causal comparison."}],"contrastive_claim_remaining":"At a museum that still uses mediated or fee-based access, a preregistered, bounded phase-in of zero-fee self-service for verified low-risk public-domain images will causally increase completed reuse and reduce recorded abandonment without exceeding rights, privacy, cultural-stewardship, workload, revenue-continuity, attribution, complaint, or distributional thresholds. The incremental contribution is the controlled local evaluation and rollback mechanism, not the open-access intervention itself.","contrastive_claim_falsifier":"The incremental claim would be eliminated by prior documentation of materially identical randomized or phased museum pilots with applicant-level abandonment, incidence, safety thresholds, and rollback, or falsified locally if the pilot produces no material increase in completed reuse or breaches any preregistered protective threshold.","confidence":"HIGH","search_limitations":"The bounded search covered six adversarial lanes and eight opened sources but was not a systematic census of museum policies, non-indexed internal evaluations, dissertations, conference proceedings, procurement records, or every jurisdiction. Applicant request logs and unpublished pilot results are especially unlikely to be public. The search cannot establish world novelty or legal freedom to operate."},"researchability_gates":{"externally_supported_problem":{"status":"PASS","rationale":"Fees, authorization requirements, costly rights workflows, and uneven availability of public-domain artwork images are directly documented. Empirical and case-study evidence also supports a relationship between more-open access and greater availability or use, although applicant abandonment is not directly measured.","source_ids":["SRC1","SRC2","SRC3","SRC6"]},"identifiable_adopter_or_authorizer":{"status":"PASS","rationale":"Museum directors, trustees, senior executives, and governing bodies are identifiable policy authorizers, supported by concrete Met and Rijksmuseum policies and the eleven-museum study.","source_ids":["SRC2","SRC4","SRC5"]},"distinct_testable_incremental_claim":{"status":"PASS","rationale":"Although the intervention is established practice, the retained sources do not report the proposed controlled, preregistered evaluation of completed reuse, applicant abandonment, group incidence, and rollback thresholds. That narrower local causal claim is distinct and falsifiable.","source_ids":["SRC1","SRC2","SRC4","SRC5"]},"bounded_next_evidence_step":{"status":"PASS","rationale":"One collection can be rights-audited and then assigned to a short phased or collection-level controlled rollout, with the ordinary request process retained as comparator and predefined outcome and halt criteria. Existing studies identify the necessary operational measures and likely confounders.","source_ids":["SRC1","SRC2","SRC4","SRC5"]},"no_unresolved_safety_or_authority_stop":{"status":"PASS","rationale":"No categorical stop was found for a verified low-risk pilot. Existing policies demonstrate workable exclusions for copyright uncertainty, privacy, contracts, safety, and Indigenous governance. Local legal authority and community stewardship must be verified before enrollment, and affected assets must remain excludable or immediately removable.","source_ids":["SRC4","SRC5","SRC7","SRC8"]},"adequate_search_evidence":{"status":"PASS","rationale":"All six required lanes were searched with direct, historical, standards/product, regional-language, and component-combination queries. Exactly eight sources were retained and opened, spanning eight publishers and including primary research, official law and guidance, and first-party museum policies.","source_ids":["SRC1","SRC2","SRC3","SRC4","SRC5","SRC6","SRC7","SRC8"]}},"strict_success":false,"screen_survival":false,"remaining_research_value":"MODERATE","recommended_next_step":"Reframe the work as an evaluation of an established open-access practice. At one museum that still charges or mediates eligible reuse, audit a bounded collection, establish a pre-pilot request-log denominator, and run a 90-day collection- or category-level phased rollout. Preregister completed reuse, abandonment, substitutions, staff time, marginal service cost, lost revenue, complaints, attribution failures, sensitive exposures, and group incidence; exclude legally or culturally uncertain assets and use immediate takedown plus threshold-based rollback. A phased design is preferable if user-level randomization would be confusing, inequitable, or easy to circumvent.","world_novelty_boundary":"This bounded public-web search indicates that the proposed problem–intervention package is established museum practice, while the specified controlled evaluation and rollback design may remain an incremental research opportunity. It does not establish world novelty, patentability, freedom to operate, market size, representative global prevalence, or realized cultural impact."}