I am writing a field guide to a taxon (ants) for which no complete field guide exists in my region, each species page will include an illustration showing each female caste of the ant in top view with the left side being the lightest color morph and the right side being the darkest morph.
I intend to base these illustrations on iNat obs licensed CC0, CC-BY or CC-BY-SA, as well as antweb.org images licensed CC-BY. One illustration may be based on multiple images.
I have no idea what kind of citation to use for these to comply with the creative commons license, and I do not know where to find this info, the Wikipedia page on this, and the legal text of the licenses, do not really give me a clear picture of what the citation should actually look like, especially when citing multiple images with different licenses
With these licenses it is technically not a citation, but rather an attribution. A proper attribution should include Title, Author, Source, and License.
I believe with what you are planning on doing, you should be fine even if you didn’t credit anyone at all. It sounds like you use these images more as references for your illustrations instead of copying them. So I would just create a sort of dedicated “References” section at the end of the field guide (behind literature references/sources) for the images. Something like:
Caveat: I am not a lawyer or a copyright expert.
There is also potentially a question about what part of a photo constitutes copyrightable original content. If your illustration is meant to capture specific anatomical features of the insect, but does not use the larger composition of the photo it is based on (the way the ant is posed, or the background details), I wonder whether it would even be considered a derivative work at all – if you had produced the same illustration based on a specimen rather than a photo, obviously the specimen and its anatomical characteristics would not be copyrighted. I think it would still be appropriate to cite the observation that you used, so it would not substantially change anything, but it is an interesting philosophical question. See also the discussion here: https://riojournal.com/article/12502/ (Included as food for thought, though I’m not sure I agree with their assertion that illustrations generally do not involve enough creativity to be copyrightable.)
This how it has been done by humanbylight, but i have an open license so people can use my photos in stead of being afraid for copy rights. I think a too straight copy license scare people and prevent people from using photos and so prevent knowledge about wild and nature
I would use a common easy to use reference method and aks the people of they agree with this kind of citation/example/proposal (you can use username and Real name, but you have to ask them) .
If you have the book in question and think that the way the author handles attributions makes sense, can’t you just use those attributions as a model?
Or at least quote the passages that led you to wonder how you should be citing your illustrations? It’s difficult to have a discussion when the basis for the underlying thoughts is only referred to obliquely (by user name, without a title or any idea of what exactly was said or presented).
I would be very surprised if specimens – as physical entities – are normally considered copyrightable (although photos of specimens may be). Copyright only applies to works that are created by humans and involve some degree of originality. I realize that preparing a specimen involves a certain amount of judgement and interpretation and this may affect the appearance of the specimen in ways that are not irrelevant when it is used e.g. as a basis for keys or illustrations. But a specimen is supposed to represent the insect in its natural material form (more or less), rather than being a creative interpretation by the preparer. Specimens are objects and thus may have owners, but this is not the same thing as copyright.
In other words, there are lots of reasons why it may make sense to credit the people whose photos you referred to when creating the illustrations, but I’m not sure if copyright is the most applicable situation here.
I’ve found that folks who list their photos with those licenses are happy to have their work referenced, and the reference format “[name] ([username])” has worked well for me (either on the same page or in the back of the book).
However, note that there are two different licenses on each iNaturalist observation - one for the photo, and one for the data. You’ll want to check the one for the photo specifically for your illustrations (which is found via the “(CC)” symbol at the bottom of the image).
