Images and plagiarism

Overview

Teaching: 5 min
Exercises: 5 min

Questions

• How much do you need to change on the image before it is considered yours?

Objectives

• Avoid image plagiarism when writing your thesis.

Please Note

The following context originally presents in a question-answer format between Dr. Bett’s team and Kate Langrell. Kate Langrell is a copyright coordinator on the library staff at the University of Saskatchewan. Kate approached the question from the perspective of using such images in a thesis. Any question regarding images being submitted to a publication, please contact Kate Langrell directly.

Case 1:

If the image that you are creating looks substantially different than the original(s), copyright permission is not required (i.e., the image is considered your own).

Case 2:

If the image that you create looks mostly or entirely like a copy of the original(s), then this requires permission from the copyright holder(s).

Overall

It is difficult to describe how to make your own image “different enough” from the original in order not to require copyright permission. It’s somewhat of a grey area and depends on the type of images you’re working with. If you are combining elements of different images into a new single image, then it might be possible to use that in your thesis without needing copyright permission.

Also, any images that have a Creative Commons (CC) licence can be used in your thesis without needing copyright permission, and some of the CC licences also allow adapting and modifying the images. If you’d like help to find more Creative Commons images, you can search for them at Creative Commons Search. In addition, information about the different CC licences and the uses they allow (e.g., whether an image can be modified or not) is available at [Creative Commons Licenses]https://creativecommons.org/licenses/.

Key Points

• It’s safe to use an image directly that is substantially different than the original in your thesis.

• Permission from the copyright holder(s) is needed if the image you created looks mostly/entirely like the original.

• For more specific questions, please contact Kate Langrell.