Original artwork/photos. We prefer authors to upload original images/photos related to their work.
- 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
- 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 photo showing people, no graphs or data plots. 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.
AI image generators. We encourage authors to get creative and experiment with AI text-to-image generation tools such as DALL-E, Stable Diffusion, Midjourney or others, to create AI-generated images conveying the main ideas of their paper. This amazing software (free of charge as of 3/2023 for limited number of images) can generate compelling images in response to a single sentence describing what the image should depict (example). We recommend to specify for DALL-E to use photorealistic or 3D style. The standard DALL-E output is a square image (1024x1024 pixels), but because we require an aspect ratio of 4:3 we recommend to resize or crop the image to 1000x750. In the TOC upload box, please provide the link to DALL-E page, describe in the caption what the original text was, and select "Public Domain/CC0" as copyright license. AI-generated images cannot be copyrighted (see Reuters article).
ForJMIR XR and Spatial Computing, authors should not submit AI-generated images for the Table of Contents image. Examples of acceptable alternatives include screen captures from the XR application, photos of users interacting with the application (with appropriate consent), or other similar options.
Examples for images created by DALL-E
Image libraries and other sources. 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
- Freepik
- 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
- Search Flickr for cc images (Creative Commons)
- Search Google for "condition creative commons" to identify photos that can be used.
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.
Order a visual abstract instead. Alternatively the TOC image can be a visual abstract instead. We offer in-house design services to create a Visual Abstract (with text) that can replace the traditional plain TOC image (no text allowed).
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
See also:
- Copyright considerations and attribution of TOC images
- What makes a good TOC image?
- What is a Visual Abstract and how to order one
Link for JMIR staff only: