The Fundamental Right to Research, Copyright and Digital Libraries Project Page

Welcome to the homepage for the PhD project
“The Fundamental Right to Research and New Impulses in Copyright Law to Support Digital Library Functions“.

This project is carried out by Etienne Valk and supervised by Prof. Martin Senftleben, Dr. João Quintais and Dr. Elena Izyumenko.

Libraries and researchers have long been working in tandem to help society move forward. No research without libraries, and no libraries without research.

Surely, for that electrifying tandem, an indispensable fuel as well as an end goal in and of themselves, are scientific publications. Copyrighted works, mostly. Through several cycles of copyright reform, exceptions have been developed for research in relation to exclusive copyrights. Increasingly, in the legal debate, a right to research is mentioned in passing. But does the current fundamental rights framework actually provide a basis for such a right? And if so, what implications would such a right have for the copyright acquis and specific, still unclear areas such as the TDM exception provisions?

The project will be informed by the following four central digital library freedoms:

• Collect digital materials, including those made available only via streaming and other restricted means, through purchase on the open market or any other legal means, no matter the underlying file format;
• Preserve those materials, and where necessary repair or reformat them, to ensure their long-term existence and availability;
• Provide controlled access to digital materials for advanced research techniques and to patrons where they are—online;
• Cooperate with other memory institutions, by sharing or transferring digital collections, so as to provide more equitable access for communities in remote and less well-funded areas.]

The project runs from June 2025 to May 2029. During that timeframe, related events as well as new and relevant previous IViR publications are shared here.