I’ve just signed up to iNaturalist. Can I use the photos (CC-BY-NC) in my research paper? How should I contact the original authors and cite them correctly? Their email addresses don’t seem to be publicly available.
It depends on the license of the journal you’re publishing with; if it’s a creative commons open access journal, then I think it would be fine. Is the research paper going to be published behind a paywall? then no, that wouldn’t be consistent with a non-commercial license. In either case I think asking first would be proper etiquette, and if they don’t have their email listed try leaving a comment on the relevant observation or sending them a private message.
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Contacting Authors: Email is private. You can send them a direct message here: https://www.inaturalist.org/messages/new
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It is important to note than not all photos on iNat have the same license. For CC-BY-NC photos you need to include proper attribution, but you need permission only if your use is commercial, I would think scholarly research use is not commercial, but @psyllidhipster brings up an interesting point about paywalled journals potentially counting as commercial.
If you need to ask permission you can message the user on iNat, but if your use is not commercial you do not need permission to use CC-BY-NC photos.
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Also, It would be nice if you first informe the author of the photograph you want to use
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See these FAQs from our help site:
Can I use the photos and sounds that are posted on iNaturalist?
How can I contact a user on iNaturalist? Can iNaturalist contact them for me?
Note that the decision as to whether you’re properly following the terms of the license is a legal one. People on the forum may have informed decisions, but as far as I know no one who’s answered so far is a lawyer. I’m not saying they’re wrong, just that you will need to consult a lawyer to get true legal advice.
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As a photo researcher for books etc, I can affirm that there are so so many grey areas when it comes to the seemingly simple term “non-commercial”. In my experience it is usually interpreted as meaning not primarily intended for the purpose of monetary gain. Pictures used in newspaper and magazine articles typically pass as non-commercial despite those publications having a cover price or subscription cost. It’s often the case for pictures used in books too, but it depends on the type of book and purpose of the picture (a photo of the Louvre Museum inside a Paris travel guidebook may well pass as non-commercial whereas the same photo used on the front cover of the same book would most likely be deemed commercial usage. My take is that in real-world practice, academic journals would almost always count as non-commercial use even with a paywall – but I don’t deny that you are correct as a technicality.
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Is it true that you need to tell the person first? It seems that this is not actually required if you are using it in a way that is allowed by the license, and I have seen this lead to spam flags when someone is using a bunch of photos for their book and the notifications are mistaken for book promotion
I know when PBS used my photos they never contacted me, I found out from a fellow iNatter on discord (not complaining, I purposely licensed my photos CC-BY-NC and PBS attributed them, this was all cool)
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I think that’s why the post you’re replying to said “it would be nice”. People are under no legal obligation to tell me if they use any of my CC-BY photos, and I licensed them that way with that fully in mind, but it still would make me happy if they did nonetheless.
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Asking for permission is at least a gesture of common politeness. I was asked a few times and gladly gave permission, even sending them the original photos. Asking for permission is just a kind of thank you and a sign of appreciation.
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I am actually surprised that this even is a grey area. I would normally understand publishing the photo in a book as prima facie commercial use. It could be “fair use”, which is a specific term in certain countries, but sounds pretty commercial to me.
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Can an iNat username not be used as a credit? That is what PBS did when they used my photos
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Your display name is the field people should be using for attribution. Usually people choose to put their name or nickname but anyone can put whatever they want in that field. It can be adjusted in your account settings.
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If you were to be using one of my photos for your research you’d be better off contacting me because I might have a higher resolution photo for you. Of course if you’re happy with what you pull directly from iNat then that’s not a problem.
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