Why my PhD hasn’t been published yet (although I’ll be tackling it again this summer):
For academics working with visual culture, securing image permissions for a publication can be extraordinarily painful. For early career academics, without access to research funds but under pressure to produce a first monograph, this pain can be felt especially keenly in the wallet.
In my own field, classical archaeology, copyright is a slightly different beast than in, say, fine art. Ancient artefacts have no copyright in themselves, and obviously no living artist can claim royalties. The only relevant copyright belongs to the photographer, so it should all be quite straightforward. But anyone with experience of the process of acquiring photographs from museum files or archives will know how varied, complex and financially horrifying it can be.
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