Hi nature people,
I’m working on a journal post to the Western Hemisphere species of the genus Hackelia and I am using exemplary observations to show key features of each species. I have used only photos from observations with CC-BY, CC-0, or CC-BY-NC licenses, and I’ve made sure to tag the user under each photo.
My question is:
If I tag a user multiple times, does that blow up their notifications? I want to credit people for the great photos they contribute, but I don’t want to be a bother to their inbox. What’s the proper etiquette here?
This might seem silly, but do I need to reach out to the users before I post the guide to the journal if I’m using their photos?
if you hit publish on a journal post, and you tagged the same user multiple times within it, they’ll only get one notification, provided you wrote all those tags before publishing. If you publish the post and then edit it multiple times, and add new tags each time, they will get multiple notifications
By tagging the OP’s in your journal post, you are properly notifying them of the use of their image(s). For the array of CC’s that you are choosing from, I don’t think you need to notify or request usage in advance, unless you were using there observation to point out a mis-identification or make some other critical note about an image.
I only reach out to OPs in advance in the rare instances when a copyrighted image is best suited for the point I want to make. After I explain the topic of an upcoming journal post, I have never been refused the use of a copyrighted image.
I’m not a lawyer but I think you can safely add CC-BY-SA to your list.
The tagging issue may be solved by putting the user’s real name (not username) under each photo. After the article is published, you can thank your contributors by tagging them in a comment.
Actually, a lot of us are credited by username on iNaturalist. Outside this context it would be nice to be credited by our “real” name.
Actually here’s an even simpler solution to your problem. Instead of acknowledging the license holder in the caption, link the photo to its corresponding photo page. The latter contains all of the information necessary to satisfy the license including license type and the name of the person who created the image (i.e., the license holder). This is how Wikipedia does it, and surely Wikipedia has consulted its lawyers on the matter.