Using Images in Your Academic Work

Photo by Sami Ullah on Unsplash
 

• Google Images
  Use the “Tools” tab on your results page to limit your search by “usage rights”. Select "Creative Commons licenses." After you select an image, you'll need to check the site it came from to find out which CC license it has.
   
• Google Images Advanced Search
  Offers more options for filtering your search, such as by color or type (photo, clip art, line drawing). Remember to select Creative Commons licenses under the "usage rights" filter.
   
• Openverse
  Search for free content in the public domain and under Creative Commons licenses.
   
• Pexels
  Copyright-free stock images and videos. All content is released under the Pexels license.
   
• Pixabay
  Copyright-free images and videos. All content is released under the Pixabay license, which makes the content safe to use without asking permission or giving credit to the artist, even for commercial purposes.
   
• Picsome by Wikimedia
  A project of Wikimedia Deutschland e. V. The application is intended to be the technical successor of their Attribution Generator. They want to make the functionalities contained in the Attribution Generator available on a larger scale and, for example, also usable for images from other repositories.
  
  
• Unsplash
  All photos published on Unsplash can be used for free. You can use them for commercial and noncommercial purposes. You do not need to ask permission from or provide credit to the photographer or Unsplash, although it is appreciated when possible.
   
• Wikimedia Commons
  Access to media -- including images, sounds and videos -- that has been uploaded by users, mostly for use on Wikipedia. Most of the content is available under some sort of Creative Commons license and licensing information is clearly provided for each item.

Paris Musées
 

• British Museum Collection Online
  The majority of the 1.9 million object images are available for anyone to use for free under a Creative Commons 4.0 license.
   
• Europeana
  Images from European libraries, archives, museums and other institutions. Search results can be filtered by copyright status including by specific CC license.
   
• Library of Congress - Free to Use and Reuse Sets
  Items from the Library's digital collections that are free to use and reuse. The Library of Congress believes that this content is either in the public domain, has no known copyright, or has been cleared by the copyright owner for public use.
   

• Paris Musées
  Online collection portal to thousands of artworks from 14 City of Paris museums. Over 150,000 images are identified as part of the public domain and available for download and usage.

• Rijksmuseum
  Images are searchable and downloadable – the item details (acquisition and rights section) will indicate whether the work is in the public domain.

• Smithsonian Open Access
  Download, share, and reuse millions of the Smithsonian’s images -- both 2D and 3D digital items – from across the Smithsonian’s 19 museums, nine research centers, libraries, archives, and the National Zoo.

• Vienna City Library
  Access historical Viennese address books, travel guides, manuscripts from Johann Strauss, Hugo Wolf and more. Digital objects have a CC 1.0 license (public domain). Only available in German.

• Wien Museum
  In addition to objects related to the city’s history and daily life, the museum has a significant collection of Viennese art. "Open Content" includes all images labelled with a download and share symbol or found using the search function “Open Content”. You can share, reuse, and modify these images for all purposes without asking for permission (including commercial use).