There are many great places to find TOC images licensed under Creative Commons/Public Domain. The following are just a few suggestions:
- Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons, e.g. through cc search
- Photopin: images under creative commons license
- Free Digital Photos e.g. http://www.freedigitalphotos.net/images/Health_And_Beauty_g66.html
- Pixabay
- A nice gallery for mobile pics especially in the developing world: Kiwanja
- To create an image showing a specific webpage or image on a smartphone iPhone4simulator or: iPadpeek
- if you have a screenshot of your app or website, use https://placeit.net/ to create an image with the screenshot on a device like a laptop, phone, with a user
- Search Flickr for cc images (Creative Commons) or use Foter (seems to be mainly FlickR images under cc license).
- Search Google for "condition creative commons" to identify photos that can be used.
Do not use:
- no logos / words (exceptions for JMIR Research Protocol and JMIR Formative Research articles are possible, and for "nice" logos that are in line with the article content, but not a university logo etc)
- no wordclouds
- no overly generic stockphotos such as people sitting at a computer, a keyboard, or a stethoscope on a computer etc...
- instead of using a screenshot of a website or app, use https://placeit.net/ to create an image with the screenshot on a device like a laptop, phone, with a user
In the description textbox in the JMIR form when you upload a TOC image, specify the origin of the image, and enter the license/attribution information. Images in the public domain are preferred. However, remember that "Creative Commons" is a license - there is still a copyright owner / source who must be credited in the image description, e.g. "Image Credit: (c) xy, from (URL), licensed under cc-by-nc 3.0" etc.
Alternatively, as TOC image we can also use a figure or a screenshot from a Multimedia Appendix (e.g. frame of a video) from the JMIR article (but only if it is a nice screenshot or shows people, no graphs please). In that case, we assume it is created by the author and licensed under our standard license (cc-by). You do not have to add this information to the figure caption.
See also:
- TOC image guidelines with examples (on JMIR site)
- Copyright considerations and attribution of TOC images
- What makes a good TOC image?
Link for JMIR staff only: