Biomedical Images: Finding Images for Lectures and Publications

Whenever you reuse an image or multimedia it is necessary to give attribution to the creator or copyright holder. Some resources provide images that are freely available for noncommericial, education purposes such as a presentation, as long as you attribute the source. These are often under a open copyright Creative Commons license, or are freely available without restrictions in the Public Domain. While other resources require that you ask for permission from the copyright holder.  Always check the copyright statement.

Attribution should be used for open-copyright work. Attribution details include:

T  - Title of the image

A  - Name of creator 

S  - Source or URL 

L  - License, type of Creative Commons license. Include a link to the license.

Images used in a journal or publication, must follow the citation format listed in the publisher's style guide. 

When citing restricted work where the copyright holder does not share the rights with the public, check the image's copyright permissions for how the image may be used, and how to obtain permission. The copyright holder may require that certain information be included.

Fair Use permits the use copyrighted material without permission under certain circumstances such as nonprofit, education purposes. Four factors determine Fair Use:

(1) the purpose and character of the use, including whether use is for nonprofit educational purposes;
(2) nature of the copyrighted work;
(3) the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
(4) the effect of the use on the potential market for or value of the work.