Image Guidelines and Resources

Compelling images—photos, figures and charts, graphics, video, or other artwork—are essential in communicating science to peers and the broader science-attentive community. On the ARM website, images submitted by the principal investigators are used in research highlights, project pages, and archived presentations and posters. The images submitted and published on the ARM website must be legally obtained. Web crawlers are now being used to detect unauthorized images, and such violations can result in significant financial consequences. This guidance is designed to help you follow best practices in image copyright laws and ensure that you:

• continue to feel comfortable submitting images with your highlights, presentations, and posters
• appreciate the importance of appropriate image use
• identify the use rights for images in your submissions to ARM
• have access to image resources needed to illustrate our science.

In addition to ARM’s image submission guidelines, you are encouraged to respect and adhere to your institution’s guidelines for image use. Find freely available images from U.S. government websites.

Copyright indicates the legal ownership of an image. Whoever creates an image holds copyright, including rights to reproduce. It exists even if the creator never registers their work. Types of images subject to copyright include artwork, digital art, charts and figures, infographics, photos, maps, and more.

When you submit a research highlight, science summary slide, presentation, or poster, you are attesting that you have the right to share these images and figures. You are responsible for any breach of third-party rights, including copyrights and moral rights (as defined by the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works, an international agreement governing copyright law).

U.S. law outlines protections for copyright holders and also defines limitations of rights. Fair use is an exception that allows work protected by copyright to be used without permission in some instances that are beneficial to society. Fair use is defined in Section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Act and includes “criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research.” However, determining if something qualifies as fair use can be difficult and is subject to interpretation.

Some national laboratories discourage fair use images. ARM also does not allow images to be exempted under the fair use claim.

ARM has added form fields to the research highlight submission form. The submission form requires you to acknowledge third-party credit/copyright or permission. To submit an image, you must acknowledge and assume responsibility for that image.

Review the image sources and if they are allowed to be submitted.

Images from your journal articles, your own images, or images from government websites (*.gov) are the preferred sources for upload to the ARM website.

Questions?

If you have questions about an image you wish to upload to the ARM website, please do not hesitate to contact us. We will be happy to help determine if your image is appropriate.