If you want to make your presentation or publication freely available („Open Access“), it is best if you search for images under a free license. There are various ways to do this:
- Google: A Google image search can be narrowed down to „Creative Commons licenses“ using the search filter. Attention: The license must be checked on the original site on which the image is published!
- Openverse: Openverse is a tool that can be used to search more than 300 million images, which can be filtered according to license and other criteria.
- Wikimedia: Wikimedia contains almost 100 million free media files, including numerous images under Creative Commons licenses.
Further tools for finding free images are available at iRIGHTS
Tips
- Always check the license of the image on the site on which it is originally published
- Use the image in accordance with the license and always cite it correctly (more information on citing)
- If there is no suitable image: Create the image yourself (see also „Using and licensing your own images“), possibly also using artificial intelligence
Using and Licensing Your Own Images
If you create an image yourself and have the rights to it, you can determine the rights of use and thus the license yourself. However, there are a few things to bear in mind:
- If people are recognizably depicted or protected works of art or logos make up the main part of the image, the rights of third parties are affected and the person depicted or the authors of the protected works must be asked for permission – preferably before the image is created!
- If the image is also to be used as (part of) an Open Educational Resource (OER), it is important to choose a license that allows for editing (CC0, CC-BY, CC-BY-SA)
- The license and the metadata required to cite the image must be provided together with the image.
Further information on licensing your own images can be found at OERinfo (in German)