Fair use of images in scholarly publishing

Fair use of images in scholarly publishing is an important issue to put on the front burner.  As Patricia Aufderheide and her colleagues at American University’s Center for Social Media remind us, confusion about copyright and fair use creates a culture of fear. As a consequence, many publishers require copyright permissions for the use of any and all images in scholarly articles and authors likewise avoid using images. I recently encountered this issue for an article I was writing.  I wanted to use some images I found in various places on the web to illustrate network analysis techniques. I considered these images to be necessary to make my argument. I reasoned that as academics, we need to be able to use whatever evidence is necessary to support our...

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