RS230/L. Jarvis/Spring 2025

At the bottom of this page, I provide a link to a resource that lists several collections of openly licensed medical images. These collections hold mostly Public Domain, openly licensed, and Creative Commons images (not copyright-protected). There might be images that are copyright-protected within those collections, however. It is your responsibility to check the copyright of the images you intend to use. If you have questions about licensing, please email Melissa Adams, madams@tacomacc.edu.

Important to know:

For media to be copyright protected, the creator needs only to fix their media in a tangible format. For example, an idea in your head is not fixed in a tangible format. If you write your idea down, it is then automatically copyright-protected. There is no need to place a note on the media indicating that it is copyright-protected; once it is fixed in a tangible format, it is by default copyright-protected. 

So: Both of these images are equally copyright-protected:

"Jasper" by MAdams. 2025 © All Rights Reserved.

Open License and Creative Commons

Always look for images that are openly licensed or Creative Commons licensed. You may find images that are in the public domain (most U.S. government images are in the public domain - they are free for anyone to use for any reason). You may also find images that are licensed under Creative Commons (CC).

This media has varying degrees of open license - some of them you only need to "attribute" (BY) - note who made the media, but you are otherwise free to use as you like.

Other licenses under Creative Commons restrict commercial use: "non-commercial" (NC)

ND means "no derivatives" - you can't change the media in any way.

SA means "share alike" - any changes you make to the media, you can license as your own, but you also need to share it under Creative Commons

This image is now openly licensed, using Creative Commons licensing convention: Attribution (BY), non-commercial use (NC), share-alike (SA)

 "Jasper" by MAdams is licensed under CC BY NC SA

You have some decisions to make about how to caption and/or cite the images you will use in your slide presentation.

1. For images that are largely decorative, you need to provide an image caption that is a citation - it offers author, title, and licensing information. I recommend not using APA citation style for this, instead using an openly licensed image citation generator, and using that information as your caption.

"Jasper" by MAdams is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

2. If your images are directly instructional, such as a chart, or image that you are using to demonstrate something specific, you would need to provide an APA caption, and also cite the source of that image in your References list. Below is a link to help you form your APA image captions and citations.

Fig. 1. Radiograph titled "Methamphetamine intoxication in a dog: case report" (Pei & Zhang, 2014).