Image Permissions and Reproduction Guidance

This guidance has been designed to clarify the permissions required to reproduce images in OLH journal articles.

Any image that an author wishes to reproduce within an open access article licensed under certain Creative Commons attribution licenses—such as the Open Library of Humanities' (OLH) preferred CC BY 4.0 license—must be carefully considered according to where it has been found and who holds the copyright before it can be included in the author's final manuscript for publication.

OLH journals require authors to secure any permissions for the reproduction of images that are currently licensed to be reproduced under restrictive terms before they may appear as figures within articles.

Reproducing Images in Open Access Online Articles

Reproducing an online image that has no clear accompanying license or copyright information from its source must be avoided in scholarly research. This is because the author must clearly give credit to the copyright holder in the figure captions that accompany reproduced images to avoid any potential legal issues and maintain good practice.

Reproduction permission must be obtained from the copyright holder of the image, in some cases with a signed reproduction agreement, where required. Even images clearly in the public domain or made available for use under an open access license (e.g. a Creative Commons attribution license) that an author wishes to display in their research must have the creator credited (where possible) and must be reproduced in accordance with the terms set out by the image's license.

Images where the copyright belongs to, for example, an estate, archive or museum may have further restrictions that legally prevent an image from being reproduced in a fully open access article. Such restrictions of image use can sometimes be found in the source of the image (e.g. on the website for the organisation or institution that is the copyright holder). These restrictions may also form the basis of a set of terms/clauses in a reproduction agreement that the author must sign before an image can be reproduced.

As such, agreement to reproduce an image with restrictions in place must be obtained by the author prior to the publication of their article.

Examples of image reproduction restrictions can include:

  • a limited number of times an image can be viewed by users on a webpage;
  • a limited number of placements of an image within an article, such as once within the main body text of an article only;
  • restrictions on where the image can be displayed on a journal's website outside of the article itself (for example, as a thumbnail or cover image for an issue);
  • a fee that must be paid to the copyright holder as a single payment or on a recurring basis over a period of time;
  • restrictions placed on the size of the image within an article, the resolution of the image and any kind of manipulation that distorts the original image (such as cropping the image or altering the aspect ratio);
  • restrictions that prevent the image from being downloaded from within the article;
  • further stipulations in the text of a reproduction agreement that might prevent the image from being able to be displayed within a fully open access article, in perpetuity, even with appropriate credit to the copyright holder given.

As such, any restrictions stated on the reproduction of an image should be carefully scrutinized to check that these are appropriate for a diamond open access publication.

Securing Image Reproduction Permissions Prior to Publication

If an image's copyright is not licensed under an open access attribution license (e.g. it has no Creative Commons license nor is labelled as being in the public domain), the author must secure adequate image reproduction permission terms for their article to be published in OLH journals with the image included.

This may be as simple as contacting the copyright holder/creator of the original image and securing their permission to reproduce their image in the article by email. However, this might also take the form of a formal, signed agreement, in some cases with fees that need to be paid.

When dealing with a copyright-held image, the OLH asks authors to secure the following terms at a minimum before an image can be reproduced in their open access article:

  • The image must have no limit on the amount of times it can be viewed on a webpage, as the article will be published, hosted and archived in perpetuity by the publisher;
  • The image must not be download restricted, as an open access article published by OLH will not be able to restrict image downloads;
  • The image must be able to be reproduced both on a webpage and within a PDF file for the article;
  • That any one-time fees for the reproduction of an image are paid in full by the author or their institution, and such fees should not be recurring after a set period of time;
  • Evidence of secured permissions via email correspondence and signed reproduction agreements must be provided to the journal's editors before the publication of the author's article can go ahead.

Some copyright holders may wish to see the proofs of an author's article to ensure that the image is being reproduced to the agreed terms. Proofs can be supplied by the journal's editors to the copyright holder of the image at the typesetting/proofing stage of an author's article.

Further Guidance on Image Reproduction Permissions and Licenses

Below is some useful information to help authors and editors wishing to reproduce images in an article:

  • Find the original online source of the desired image that contains information on the reproduction of the image in other work(s). Do not rely on image search engines such as Google to take images from. If no copyright or licensing information exists for the image, do not assume that the image is fine to reproduce. An alternative image should be sourced that states adequate copyright/licensing information.
  • Free, online repositories of media files such as Wikimedia Commons contain images with license information attached. Wikimedia Commons in particular features many images that are licensed under Creative Commons attribution licenses. However, carefully checking the license is still a necessary step as some images are licensed under more restrictive Creative Commons licenses (such as non-commercial or ShareAlike).
  • If the image is attributed to a Creative Commons license or is marked as being in the public domain, check that the image's license and accompanying information is compatible with the intended license for the author's article (for OLH journals, an article's license is CC BY 4.0 by default). A non-commercial license, for example, restricts content from being shared by many universities in teaching materials, as many are commercial entities.
  • If the image belongs to a gallery, museum, or other such organisation, there may be information on their website about the reproduction of their images and how to secure image reproduction permissions. This must be read and followed. A form may need to be filled in and sent to the copyright holder to request image reproduction permission, or to request for a reproduction agreement to be issued.
  • If a reproduction agreement contains incompatible or unsatisfactory terms that would prevent the image from being reproduced in the author's article, the copyright holder may be willing to adjust the terms of the agreement; many use default terms and some can be flexible. Contacting them about such issues could mean the difference between being able to reproduce a vital image or not.
  • If the image is hosted on a personal website without any attribution license or with unclear copyright information, the image should ideally not be reproduced as this can be considered an unreliable source. If the author still wishes to reproduce the image, they should make every effort to contact the person who owns the website (should contact details exist) to ask whether 1) that person holds the copyright to the image, and if so, 2) whether they will grant the author reproduction permission of the image for their article. The image should not be reproduced if the copyright holder cannot be contacted or if they decline.
  • Images that might fall into the formal category of public domain either clearly state this if copyright has been waived by the creator, or are usually 50–100 years from when the last surviving creator of the work dies. However, in different countries and jurisdictions this timeframe may differ, so it is not reliable to assume that a work has become available in the public domain without researching this thoroughly first. Editors may ask for evidence of this before publication can go ahead. Further information on public domain works can be found here.
  • Images on social media platforms that have been created by a user should be treated the same as an image on a personal website. The content creator should be approached by the author and asked if reproduction of the image in their article can go ahead.
  • In some cases, an alternative to image reproduction within an article if no license or copyright information exists, or if the content creator cannot be contacted, is to cite the online location of an image as a reference, using the website’s URL, title, and the date of last access. However, the author should be aware that there is no guarantee the image will be hosted at the source's location indefinitely.