Cultural heritage images, MiC clarifications: no fee for scientific journals and theses

Scientific journals on theAnvur list and academic theses will not have to pay any fees for reproducing images of cultural heritage. This was explained today by the head of the Legislative Office of the Ministry of Culture, Antonio Tarasco, responding in part to the controversy that arose following the ministerial decree, number 161, with which Minister Gennaro Sangiuliano revolutionized the reproduction of images of cultural heritage, introducing a new fee schedule but abolishing the free fee for scientific journals that are published for profit.

“For personal use and for purposes of study,” Tarasco specified meanwhile, “no fee is due to the Administration. This is written in Article 108 of our Cultural Heritage and Landscape Code and is also clearly reiterated on page 7 of the April 11 ministerial decree. Where there is no profit motive and photographs are taken, independently, and the Administration does not bear any costs, you do not have to pay anything. Therefore, students who need to publish photographs in their dissertations or scholars who need to take images of cultural property for their scientific research owe nothing to the Ministry of Culture.”

“The table published on page 7 of the Fee Schedule,” Tarasco continues, “applies only as a ’reimbursement’ of expenses incurred by the Administration (for example, the use of the photocopier) and there is no profit motive. Under these conditions, how can it be said that the April 11 decree would be ’liberticidal’? Otherwise, if the images are used for profit in a publishing product or in giftware (as in the Ravensburger case), only then must a fee be paid. This, too, is written in the Cultural Heritage Code; the adoption of the ’Fee Schedule’ was a necessity imposed by the law that obliges every public body (thus, not only the Ministry of Culture) to define ’the minimum amounts of fees and royalties for the use and reproduction of property.’ The last Fee Schedule dated back to 1994 (Minister Alberto Ronchey), and over the years a real ’jungle’ had formed in which order needed to be put in place. In any case, even when the fee is to be paid to the Ministry, it is to be paid not by individual scholars, as erroneously reported in the article, but by the companies that profit. In any case, in order to avoid any further speculation in the coming days we will clarify with a subsequent act that nothing is due for reproductions needed for scientific journals on the Anvur list and for academic theses.”

Image: the Ministry of Culture. Photo: Finestre Sull’Arte

Cultural heritage images, MiC clarifications: no fee for scientific journals and theses

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