“You wouldn’t steal a car…” — that VHS piracy ad that ironically turned out to use pirated music.
We all know that when you write a paper and use examples from the literature to back up your argument you need to cite those sources. Citations and crediting sources is not a new concept in academia, so why do so many people think it’s ok to use and share creative sources—like photos, videos, and graphics—without crediting the original creator?
It can be tempting to jump onto Google Image Search, find a cool photo of your study species (or whatever) then chuck it in your powerpoint presentation and call it a day. I see this all the time, in talks and on social media, and will admit that when I first started making presentations during my honours year I also thought it was No Big Deal. The audience for my talk was going to be very small, who did it hurt? Blah blah blah…
Fortunately, as I started making more presentations and became more active in SciComm, especially on Twitter, I realised that there are problems with not crediting creative sources properly. Unfortunately, many people don’t seem to understand why it’s Not Okay to use creative sources without crediting them. Here are the main reasons why it’s Not Okay:
By not crediting your sources you are (hopefully unintentionally) claiming credit for that source. The general assumption is that if there is no credit on a source, that *you*, the presenter, created it.
This can then cause problems down the road if someone else wants to share something from your presentation/tweet/blog post etc. They will assume that you are the original creator, and may incorrectly credit you in their subsequent presentation.
Not having credit on things you share might lead people to question your integrity and authenticity as a science communicator and researcher. I try to give people the benefit of the doubt, but generally I won’t retweet or share anything that doesn’t have appropriate credit and/or is obviously not the work of the tweeter.
Using someone else’s work without proper attribution is *stealing*, intentional or not. How would you feel if someone stole something you made? A lot of time, effort, and dedication goes into photos, videos, and graphics. A lot of uncredited photos are really good, hence why people want to share them. However, when they are stolen the effort that went into making them is devalued. In the words of my friend, photographer Ewen Bell, “You are taking something that *is* valuable to the creator, regardless of whether it has a financial value or not. It's personal to the creator, even if it isn't personal to you. In other words, it's a shitty thing to do so how about let's not do that”. (Thanks Ewen, for the comments and reminder that no credit = stealing!)
By sharing *cough* stealing *cough* uncredited photos you are also removing any context behind that photo. This can be especially harmful when it comes to photos of wildlife or people. People like to anthropomorphise animals and their behaviours based off a single photo, which is, almost 100% of the time, incorrect (anthropomorphism is a huge pet peeve of mine, but that’s a blog post for another day). Many ecologists will share photos of animals they have captured safely and with ethics approval, but without context this can lead people to decide that they “want one”, resulting in poaching for the pet trade (another rant for another day) and the deaths of many wild animals in captivity.
But Erika, my friend said it was cool if I used their photo and said I didn’t need to credit them.
Good for you and your friend! However, you should still credit them. If your friend wrote a paper and you used it as a reference, you’d still cite them, right?
I’ve seen the error of my ways! But, does this mean I can’t use any of the presentations I’ve already prepared and have been using for years?
Well, yes, and no. If you still want to use your presentations you should rectify your mistake by going back through your presentations and adding credit. If you can’t remember who the original creator was you can use Google Reverse Image Search to find out! Just drag the image file into Google Image Search and it *should* show you the original source. It’ll take some time, but it’ll be worth it because you’ll know that your presentations are nice and ethical.
Adding credit to photos makes my presentation look ugly and messy!
Citations make papers look ugly and messy too, but we still use them. There are ways to include credit that don’t look too messy. For example, you can add an extra text box to the bottom of the photo. Depending on the background of your slides you can leave the box opaque, black, or white, and use black or white text. You can also use a smaller font, so that the credit is there and readable, but not enormous.
Watermarks are ugly and annoying! Can I crop them out?
Best not. The whole purpose of watermarks is so that if someone (*cough* you *cough*) doesn’t give credit there is still some indicator of who the original creator is. Even if something has a watermark you should still credit the source as if it’s not watermarked. It will keep your presentation visually consistent, and doesn’t leave room for misunderstanding.
It’s too hard and time consuming. I don’t wanna!
Think about it, would you want someone taking credit for work that you’ve done? Probably not. So just do it. Once you get into the habit of adding credit it should become second nature when you are putting together presentations, tweets, blog posts, or social media posts.
My supervisor told me I don’t need to add credit/they told me to remove credit from my slides.
Sorry, but your supervisor is wrong.
Can’t I just say “not my photo” or “not mine” to indicate that the thing I’m sharing isn’t mine?
NO! Adding “not my photo” or “not mine” instead of credit is NOT OKAY! If you found the image in the first place you can easily grab the credit and add it to your tweet/post.
Here are some examples of how to add credit on different platforms:
Presentations: given the lack of spare space on a Powerpoint slide, it’s generally seen as acceptable to just include the name of the creator alongside the photo. You could just overlay the text in the bottom corner, or you could add a solid bar along the bottom to hold the text. Do whatever looks best for your slides. You could also add a slide at the end of your presentation with links to the sources, so that if you share the slides online people will be able to find your sources.
Examples of how to add credit to photos in a Powerpoint presentation. 1. Overlay the text. 2. Black text on a white background. 3. White text on a black background. Original image source: Erika Roper (me!).
Blog posts: you should include text along the lines of “image credit: name via [link]” or “source: name via [link]”, with a link to the URL of where you got the image. There’s a bit of credit-ception going on below, as I’ve credited the original in the screenshot, and also in the caption of the screenshot.
Example of credit in a blog post. Screenshot of “So what is a Black-cockatoo anyway?” by Erika Roper. Original image source: Ralph Green via Flickr.
Facebook posts: there’s no space issues here so you have no excuse. You should include the name of the source and the link to the source. In this example ESA has used a photo that I entered into their annual Photo Competition, which is why there is no link to the original source. I gave permission to ESA to use my photos with credit when I entered the competition.
Example of credit in a Facebook post. Screenshot of a Facebook post from the Ecological Society of Australia. Original image source: Erika Roper (me again!).
Twitter: Yes, there are character limits on Twitter, but that’s no excuse to not add credit. If other people can manage it, so can you. I like to add credit using the formula “📷: Name via [link]”, and I include the person’s Twitter handle if possible. The credit should be in the tweet with the photo, *not* in a subsequent tweet. If you are using your own photos in tweets and want to be sure people know, you can use #OwnPic to indicate you took the photo. Of course, if you re-tweet someone’s photo tweet, the credit is already attached, but remember point 2 from above. The person you’re re-tweeting might not be the owner of the photo, so if you’re not sure, you should check. Especially as there are numerous accounts on Twitter that steal photos and tweet them without credit, often with misleading or incorrect captions attached (see point 5 above about loss of context).
The example below is from when I hosted #BlackCockatoos Week on @ParrotOfTheDay back in January 2020. I don’t have enough photos of all the Black-cockatoo species, so I shared properly credited photos from the Macaulay Library database instead.
Edit 29 June 2020:
Recently I’ve been seeing a lot of tweets where someone will share an article, and will attach a photo from the article to the tweet. I understand why they do this, as a photo makes a tweet more visible and engaging. However, not once have I seen any credit for the photo in the tweet. Once again, this is misleading as most people will assume the photo is the tweeters, and may not even click through to the article. If you want to do this, you need to add credit for the photo to the tweet. The credit will be in the article, under the photo. THERE ARE NO EXCUSES.
Creative Commons and Copyright
One thing that also needs to be considered when using other people’s photos etc is copyright, asking permission, and the use of Creative Commons Licences.
Because everything is automatically copyrighted upon creation, you should ask permission before using a photo or resource that someone else has created. You should check the Copyright/Creative Commons info attached to the image to confirm. Some Creative Commons categories allow for use with attribution, without the need to contact the owner for permission.
While researching copyright and creative commons for this blog post I discovered that I have linked to some “All Rights Reserved” photos in some of my older blog posts. This means that I cannot use the photos, even with credit, so I now need to either get permission from the creator of the images, or update those blog posts with new images that are covered under creative commons and allow sharing with attribution. Whoops! This goes to show that not everyone is perfect (not that I claim to be!) and everyone is capable of learning and changing as time goes by.
This is a good video explainer of how Creative Commons works:
So there you go, do the right thing and credit your sources. ALL your sources. And if you’re not sure, just ask!