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About the Copyright Evidence Wiki

The Copyright Evidence Wiki is a digital resource developed by the CREATe Centre at the University of Glasgow. The aim of the Wiki is to construct a complete catalogue of existing empirical evidence relevant to copyright policy in order to inform public debate. The evidence is coded by many categories, including country, industry, funder and research method, offering an in-depth view of existing findings. The codes can be explored using the semantic drilldown function.

Purpose and Scope

The Copyright Evidence Wiki is the central part of CopyrightEvidence.org, a portal that intends to establish a body of evidence that allows better decision making in a contested policy field. Competing claims can be assessed and challenged if the underlying data and methods are transparent. Robustness and limitations of findings are available for all to see and reference.

This project is a form of dynamic literature review in a rapidly changing technological, business and socio-legal landscape. Only very recently, new research methods in combination with the development of big data techniques, which are richer both in size and in depth, have allowed researchers to test empirically key theoretical propositions and forced them to build theories which are consistent with observation. Topical policy issues and political decisions can be set in the context of empirical evidence.This generated the need to evaluate political decisions and design policy interventions based on evidence.

The Evidence Wiki builds on an innovative open research philosophy. Copyright can be examined from an interdisciplinary perspective that facilitates bringing evidence to the debate from studies in fields that were previously overlooked. Relevant empirical work spreads across conventional methodological and disciplinary boundaries and it does not need to have "copyright" in the title.

A crucial dimension of the existing evidence examines different stages of production (e.g. creation, innovation, diffusion, distribution), in various creative industries (e.g. music, film and motion pictures, TV programmes, computer software, books), and estimates the effects of copyright on diverse agents in each sector, such as creators, investors, distributors, users or society as a whole. The fact that the impact of copyright law differs across various actors, industries and demographic groups, implies the need for more specific policies. For instance, even though surveys, such as Ofcom (2011), provide evidence of heterogeneous consumption patterns, this remains an understudied aspect.

The transition to a global digital economy is associated with new challenges for enforcement authorities, for copyright law and for new business models. Imaginative use of the increasing volume of data is crucial for the design of more effective policies at the national and international level. Importantly, the effects of copyright protection and infringement for welfare, creativity and innovation require that policy decision making be consistent with rigorous empirical analysis.

Editorial Board

  • Prof. Martin Kretschmer (chair), University of Glasgow
  • Assoc. Prof. Kristofer Erickson (co-chair), University of Leeds
  • Dr Amy Thomas (managing editor), University of Glasgow
  • Dr Kenneth Barr, University of Glasgow
  • Prof. Giorgio Fazio, Newcastle University
  • Assoc. Prof. Heather Ford, UTS, Sydney
  • Prof. Rebecca Giblin, University of Melbourne
  • Prof. Paul Heald, University of Illinois
  • Prof. Thomas Margoni, KU Leuven & CREATe
  • Bartolomeo Meletti, Learning on Screen & CREATe
  • Assoc. Prof. Joost Poort, University of Amsterdam
  • Fred Saunderson, National Library of Scotland
  • Prof. Ruth Towse, Bournemouth University & CREATe


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Editorial Board Meeting, 2017

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Members of the original Copyright Evidence Wiki team

Next: Methodology