{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,3,2]],"date-time":"2026-03-02T16:19:28Z","timestamp":1772468368892,"version":"3.50.1"},"reference-count":23,"publisher":"MDPI AG","issue":"3","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2026,3,2]],"date-time":"2026-03-02T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1772409600000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"funder":[{"name":"Living forever the past through a 3Digital world\u2014Lip3D project, Digital Europe Programme","award":["101173974"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["101173974"]}]},{"name":"Living forever the past through a 3Digital world\u2014Lip3D project, Digital Europe Programme","award":["DIGITAL-2023-CLOUD-DATA-AI-05-CULTHERITAGE"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["DIGITAL-2023-CLOUD-DATA-AI-05-CULTHERITAGE"]}]}],"content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["Informatics"],"abstract":"<jats:p>This paper evaluates the platform-mediated importance and impact of 3D cultural heritage models stored on Sketchfab by analyzing user engagement and retention metrics (views, likes, and comments), and provides a comparative assessment across other major 3D platforms. Our primary goal is to understand how cultural heritage content performs in terms of reach, engagement, and reuse conditions, and how platform design and taxonomies shape what becomes visible and measurable. We map Sketchfab\u2019s Cultural Heritage &amp; History ecosystem through a reproducible, API-driven workflow built on public metadata for over 1.37 million models (views, likes, comments, tags, and licences). The results depict a domain in rapid expansion between 2018 and 2025, while also revealing a strongly unequal attention economy: most models receive limited interaction, whereas a small minority concentrates visibility and engagement. The category Cultural Heritage &amp; History shows high endorsement relative to reach, consistent with \u201chigh-value\u201d engagement once content is discovered. Methodologically, large-scale harvesting required automation to manage cursor pagination, intermittent failures, and rate limits (e.g., HTTP 429). In this context, ChatGPT provided essential support by assisting the design and refinement of the extraction and counting algorithm, replacing what would otherwise have required extensive manual counting and verification at a scale that could plausibly take months.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.3390\/informatics13030036","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2026,3,2]],"date-time":"2026-03-02T14:55:01Z","timestamp":1772463301000},"page":"36","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/mdpi_crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":0,"title":["Mapping 3D Digital Heritage at Scale: A ChatGPT-Assisted Analysis of Sketchfab\u2019s \u201cCultural Heritage &amp; History\u201d Models"],"prefix":"10.3390","volume":"13","author":[{"given":"Massimiliano","family":"Pepe","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Engineering and Geology, \u201cG. d\u2019Annunzio\u201d University of Chieti-Pescara, Viale Pindaro 42, 65127 Pescara, Italy"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0003-1921-9267","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Andrei","family":"Crisan","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Steel Structures and Structural Mechanics, Politehnica University Timi\u0219oara, Pia\u021ba Victoriei 2, 300006 Timi\u0219oara, Romania"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-3193-9446","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Emmanuel","family":"Maravelakis","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Electronic Engineering, Hellenic Mediterranean University, 73133 Chania, Greece"}]},{"given":"Donato","family":"Palumbo","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Engineering and Geology, \u201cG. d\u2019Annunzio\u201d University of Chieti-Pescara, Viale Pindaro 42, 65127 Pescara, Italy"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-8521-0693","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Ahmed Kamal Hamed","family":"Dewedar","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Engineering and Geology, \u201cG. d\u2019Annunzio\u201d University of Chieti-Pescara, Viale Pindaro 42, 65127 Pescara, Italy"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0003-1964-7667","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Przemys\u0142aw","family":"Klapa","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Geodesy, University of Agriculture in Krakow, ul. Balicka 253a, 30-198 Krak\u00f3w, Poland"}]}],"member":"1968","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2026,3,2]]},"reference":[{"key":"ref_1","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Klapa, P., \u017bygad\u0142o, A., and Pepe, M. (2025). 3D Heritage Reconstruction Through HBIM and Multi-Source Data Fusion: Geometric Change Analysis Across Decades. Appl. Sci., 15.","DOI":"10.3390\/app15168929"},{"key":"ref_2","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"114064","DOI":"10.1016\/j.jobe.2025.114064","article-title":"A 3D Reconstruction Pipeline for Generating Textured Models of Large-Scale Architectural Heritage","volume":"113","author":"Long","year":"2025","journal-title":"J. Build. Eng."},{"key":"ref_3","unstructured":"Spiess, F., Waltensp\u00fcl, R., and Schuldt, H. (2024). The Sketchfab 3D Creative Commons Collection (S3D3C). arXiv."},{"key":"ref_4","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Rattanarungrot, S., White, M., and Chairungsee, S. (2025). 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