The research, published in the European Journal of Cultural Management and Policy, systematically analysed six prominent international impact assessment approaches, including the Europeana Impact Playbook, the ISO 16687:2025 standard, the MOI! Museums of Impact framework, the SoPHIA model, the inDICEs Change Impact Assessment Framework, and the CSIRO Impact Evaluation Guide. Each offers distinct strengths, but all share critical blind spots when it comes to digital initiatives, data preservation, participatory practices, and the ethical governance of emerging technologies.

The study’s central argument rests on a conceptual shift first articulated by information scientist Michael Buckland in 1991. Museums have always managed what Buckland called information-as-thing—the physical artefacts in their collections. Digital transformation does not change this core mission; it merely changes the format of that thing into digital surrogates, datasets, and rich metadata. The informational potential of a digital scan or an object’s metadata remains latent until it is activated through curation and analysis. Impact, therefore, is the result of this activation.

Digital Curation provides the principles for managing these digital assets throughout their entire lifecycle—from creation and preservation to access, use, and transformation. The researchers drew on the d-KISTI Digital Curation Lifecycle Model, which reconceptualises curation as a process of active value creation rather than passive preservation. Digital Humanities, in turn, offers the methodologies and computational tools—data mining, network analysis, interactive platforms—to analyse, interpret, and visualise the vast informational value unlocked by curation.

The comparative analysis revealed four persistent challenges across existing models. Most frameworks struggle to move beyond simple output metrics such as website visits or the number of digitised items, failing to assess deeper outcomes like the quality of online engagement or the value generated from data reuse. There is a general absence of integrated frameworks for assessing the ethical governance of data, algorithmic transparency, and the potential biases of artificial intelligence. The cultural pillar of sustainability is often implicit rather than a core dimension, and the environmental impact of digital infrastructures themselves—an often-invisible ecological cost of servers and data storage—is rarely considered. Attributing long-term societal change to a specific museum intervention remains one of the greatest methodological hurdles for the entire field.

In response, the researchers propose the Impact Assessment Model with Digital Curation and Digital Humanities, or IAM-CDH. This multidimensional framework integrates five interconnected thematic dimensions and 45 specific indicators, designed to offer a more holistic, ethical, and sustainable evaluation. The dimensions cover the Digital and Informational Ecosystem, Participation and Co-Creation, Sociocultural and Educational Impact, Culture as a Pillar of Sustainability, and Innovation and Interdisciplinary Collaboration.

The first dimension assesses the quality, ethics, and sustainability of a museum’s digital assets, moving beyond simple access metrics to evaluate metadata quality through FAIR principles and the ethical governance of data and AI. The participation dimension measures the transition of the public from spectator to co-creator, assessing engagement in crowdsourcing and citizen science projects and their tangible impact on knowledge production. The sociocultural dimension evaluates diversity, inclusion, wellbeing, and social cohesion, specifically measuring the development of digital and informational literacy. The sustainability dimension frames museum activities within a holistic paradigm, using curation strategies such as data appraisal and storage optimisation to measure and mitigate the ecological impact of technological infrastructure. The innovation dimension gauges the museum’s role as a catalyst through the reuse of its open data by third parties.

The framework is designed as a virtuous cycle. Better curation enables better assessment, because applying FAIR principles and metadata quality standards generates higher-quality, more reliable data that makes impact measurement more accurate. Better assessment improves curation, because the results provide direct feedback that allows curators to refine their digital strategies and demonstrate the value of their work. The implementation process is structured in three iterative macro-stages: diagnosis and strategic design, implementation of actions and measurement, and evaluation, narration, and continuous adjustment.

The researchers acknowledge that the IAM-CDH is a conceptual framework whose indicators are theoretically grounded but not yet empirically validated in real-world museum settings. Future work should focus on pilot studies across diverse museum contexts, the development of practical open-source tools or dashboards, and deeper research into auditing algorithmic biases in digital collections. The underlying logic, they argue, transcends the museum sector and proves intrinsically adaptable to the wider Galleries, Libraries, Archives, and Museums ecosystem.

Ultimately, the study suggests that Digital Curation and Digital Humanities offer a theoretically robust foundation to reconfigure how museums assess and communicate their impact. The IAM-CDH is proposed as a conceptual framework to assist institutions not only in demonstrating value but in actively shaping it, turning evaluation from a reporting exercise into a strategic, reflexive, and transformative practice that reinforces museums’ societal relevance in the digital age.

Subject of Research: Cultural Heritage and Digital Transformation

Article Title: Integrating digital curation and digital humanities for a holistic museum impact assessment

Article References: Gertrudes, M., & Ochôa, P. (2026). Integrating digital curation and digital humanities for a holistic museum impact assessment. European Journal of Cultural Management and Policy, 16, Article 15930. https://doi.org/10.3389/ejcmp.2026.15930

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.3389/ejcmp.2026.15930

Keywords: museums, digital curation, digital humanities, impact assessment, cultural heritage, GLAM sector, artificial intelligence ethics, participatory culture, Integrating, digital, curation, humanities

Under the arrangement, Sage has acquired four of the titles outright and entered into a publishing agreement for a fifth, which will continue under a lease arrangement. The journals will begin publishing with Sage from 2027, and submissions are being accepted now. The five titles are New Formations, Soundings, Anarchist Studies, Twentieth Century Communism and FORUM: For comprehensive education. Together they represent an unusually coherent slice of critical scholarship, spanning cultural theory, political philosophy, anarchist history and practice, communist studies and education policy, and their transfer to a much larger publisher raises questions and opportunities alike about how niche interdisciplinary journals survive in the twenty-first century.

New Formations has been a pioneer of interdisciplinary research since the 1980s, with a core focus on work that explores the uses of cultural theory for the analysis of political and social issues. Emerging at a moment when cultural studies was transforming the humanities in Britain and beyond, the journal built a reputation for publishing writing that refused the boundaries between disciplines, bringing theoretical frameworks to bear on questions of politics, identity and social life. Its continuation under Sage means that this tradition of theoretically informed, politically engaged analysis will retain a platform, now with the reach and infrastructure of one of the world’s largest independent academic publishers behind it.

Soundings publishes informed writing on contemporary political and cultural debates, and its intellectual identity is broadly rooted in the traditions of the New Left and the Gramscian tradition. That orientation has made it a distinctive voice in British political thought, drawing on Antonio Gramsci’s ideas about hegemony, common sense and cultural struggle to interrogate the present. For readers and contributors, the journal has functioned as a space where academic analysis and political argument meet, and its move to Sage is presented by both parties as a way of securing that space for the future rather than changing its character.

Anarchist Studies, an international inter- and multi-disciplinary journal, has for more than twenty years published research into the history, culture, theory and practice of anarchism. The field it serves has grown considerably in recent decades, as scholars across history, politics, sociology, geography and literary studies have turned renewed attention to anarchist movements and ideas. The journal’s continuation matters for a scholarly community that has few dedicated outlets, and its new publisher’s global distribution networks are likely to connect its work with readers far beyond the circles it has traditionally reached.

Twentieth Century Communism provides an international forum for the latest research and debate on communism and its political, social and cultural influence. As historical distance from the twentieth century grows, the study of communist movements, states and cultures has become an increasingly active area of historiography, and the journal has served as a venue where new archival research and theoretical debate can be brought together. Its acquisition by Sage ensures that this forum will continue to publish at a time when small specialist journals face mounting pressures from rising production costs, shifting library budgets and the demands of digital access.

The fifth title, FORUM: For comprehensive education, occupies a special place in British educational debate. It publishes critical analysis of UK education policy and has provided a platform for debate about comprehensive and state-provided education for more than sixty years. Unlike the other four titles, it will publish with Sage under a lease arrangement rather than an outright acquisition, a structure that reflects the particular circumstances of the title while still securing its future. For educators, policymakers and researchers concerned with the fate of comprehensive schooling, the journal’s survival is a guarantee that a long-running critical conversation about state education will not fall silent.

The decision to move the portfolio came from Lawrence & Wishart itself, which has been publishing critical left texts on politics and culture since 1936. Sally Davidson, Director of Lawrence & Wishart, said the press was very proud of the small collection of journals it had put together over the years, but recognised that the time had come for them to move on to a bigger publisher, better able to look after them in the challenging landscape of twenty-first century journals publishing. She added that the press was very pleased that its journals were now passing into the safe hands of Sage, a publisher which shares its values and concern for ethical scholarship. The remarks capture the dilemma facing many small presses: editorial mission and community loyalty on one side, and the technical, financial and legal complexities of modern journal production on the other.

For its part, Sage framed the acquisition in terms of scholarly continuity and reach. Caroline Porter, Vice President of Journals Editorial at Sage, said the journals have made important contributions to scholarship in the social sciences and humanities, publishing research and writing that informs understanding of society and social change. She said Sage looks forward to supporting each journal’s continued success and connecting their work with readers around the world. Sage, founded by 24-year-old Sara Miller McCune in 1965 and today controlled by a group of trustees charged with maintaining its independence and mission indefinitely, publishes books, journals and library resources alongside a growing range of technologies for discovery, access and engagement, and it has positioned the new titles within that broader ecosystem.

Crucially for the journals’ existing communities, the editorial leadership and the aims and scope of all five titles will remain in place. That commitment to continuity is designed to reassure editors, editorial boards, reviewers and authors that the intellectual identity of each journal will not be diluted in the transition, while the move to a larger publisher is expected to create opportunities for future growth and wider dissemination. More information about the journals and submission guidelines is available on the journals’ webpages, and researchers interested in submitting work can already direct their manuscripts to the new Sage-hosted homes. For a publishing landscape in which independent radical periodicals have often struggled to keep pace with digital infrastructure requirements, the transfer of these five titles represents a pragmatic answer to a structural problem: preserving decades of critical scholarship by giving it the scale, stability and global visibility that only a major publisher can now provide.

Subject of Research: Transfer of the Lawrence & Wishart journals portfolio to Sage publishing

Article Title: Sage becomes new home of Lawrence & Wishart journals

Article References: Sage becomes new home of Lawrence & Wishart journals. (n.d.). Original publication

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: Not provided

Keywords: Sage, Lawrence & Wishart, academic publishing, New Formations, Soundings, Anarchist Studies, Twentieth Century Communism, FORUM, interdisciplinary journals, social sciences, humanities, left publishing