Permission to reuse screenshot of Zotero manager

Dear Zotero team

I couldn't find any contact email address on the Zotero webpage, so I write to here in the Zotero Forum.

Together with my colleague Koenraad De Smedt I'm writing a chapter on citation of linguistic data to be published in this handbook:

The Open Handbook of Linguistic Data Management
Open Handbooks in Linguistics series, MIT Press Open
Editors: Andrea L. Berez-Kroeker, Bradley McDonnell, & Eve Koller

This is intended to be a useful handbook on principles and methods for the
management, archiving, sharing, and citing of linguistic research data – especially digital data – with an eye toward engaging growing trends in transforming linguistics into a more data-driven and reproducible scientific endeavor. The intended audience is linguistics practitioners at all levels (students, researchers, instructors) and in most sub-fields of linguistics.

Our chapter is on citation of research data. A minor section within the chapter is about using Zotero to manage citations. In this section, we'd like to include a screenshot of a part of the user interface of the Zotero manager (v. 5.0.80) showing how to define an in-text reference to a part of a resource.

We kindly ask you for the permission to include this screenshot in our chapter, both in the electronic Open Access version and in the printed version. The electronic version of the handbook will be published under a Creative Commons CC-BY-NC license. We'd prefer the same license to apply for the reuse of the screenshot, or alternatively a less restrictive CC license or even a CC0 waiver.


Best regards,
Philipp Conzett & Koenraad De Smedt
  • No permission needed. In our view, using explanatory screenshots for educational materials is pretty clearly fair use.
  • Thanks for letting us know!
  • I'm confused, here. Isn't the screenshot property of the person who took the screenshot just like a piece of art? Someone who creates an image in Photoshop doesn't write to Adobe and ask them for permission to use the image they created? If the image is created by the OP then how does the "fair use" permission apply? Fair use can only apply if the copyright does not belong to the person using the image.
  • Probably not the right place to discuss this in detail unless you have a specific question about using Zotero elements, but software GUI is indeed copyrighted (and, to the extent that it includes logos, subject to trademarks) and screenshots of it are typically treated as fair-use. See e.g. Wikipedia's handling of them: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Fair_use_screenshots
  • Thank you @adamsmith.
    Agree

    :Probably not the right place to discuss this in detail unless you have a specific question about using Zotero elements

    Interesting read, thanks for the clarification.
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