Can Researchers Use Participant Photographs in Publications or Presentations?

Can a photograph collected during research also be shown in your research outputs?

You have a photograph that would make your findings much easier to understand. Perhaps it documents a clinical feature, illustrates an ethnographic setting, captures an activity, or shows something a participant created or demonstrated.

The photograph was legitimately collected during the study. Does that mean you can put it in a journal article, conference presentation, thesis, poster, or website?

Not automatically. Collecting an image for research and disseminating that image to an audience are different uses. If the participant is identifiable, publication or presentation can expose the image to people who were never part of the original research environment and, in online publication, potentially to a worldwide and persistent audience.

Permission to take a photograph is not necessarily permission to publish it

Using a photograph changes who can see the participant

Collection and publication are different uses

A participant may reasonably agree to a researcher taking photographs for analysis without expecting their face to appear in a journal, conference slide, public repository, or website.

This distinction is particularly explicit in medical publishing. Current International Committee of Medical Journal Editors recommendations state that identifying information should not be published in photographs unless it is essential for scientific purposes and the patient, parent, or guardian gives written informed consent for publication. ICMJE also recommends informing identifiable patients about potential Internet as well as print availability.

The precise requirements differ across disciplines, institutions, publishers, and jurisdictions. The broader principle remains useful beyond medicine: determine whether the participant agreed to the intended disclosure rather than treating permission to collect an image as unlimited permission to disseminate it.

The same principle applies to other media. consent to be recorded does not necessarily establish consent for the recording to be shown to others.

First ask whether the participant is identifiable

A full frontal portrait is an obvious case, but photographs can identify people in less obvious ways. A profile, distinctive tattoo, uniform, rare physical feature, name badge, recognizable workplace, home, vehicle, or combination of contextual details may reveal identity.

Identification is also audience-dependent. A photograph that means little to a journal reader on another continent may immediately identify a participant to colleagues, relatives, classmates, or members of the participant's community.

Researchers should therefore assess whether a face, location, or other characteristic makes the material identifiable before deciding that an image is sufficiently de-identified.

Scientific usefulness does not eliminate the need to protect privacy

Some photographs genuinely add information that cannot be communicated adequately in text. Clinical images may demonstrate a physical finding. Visual ethnography may rely on images as data. Photovoice and participatory visual methods can make photographs central to the research itself.

That analytical value does not mean every identifying feature should automatically be published. Ask what the audience needs to see to understand or evaluate the finding.

ICMJE recommends omitting nonessential identifying details and obtaining informed consent when anonymity cannot be maintained. This reflects a useful proportionality principle: preserve identifying visual information when it is genuinely necessary and appropriately authorized, rather than because the photograph happens to be available.

Covering the eyes is not reliable anonymisation

The familiar black rectangle across a participant's eyes has a long history in published images. It should not be treated as a guarantee of anonymity.

ICMJE explicitly states that masking the eye region in patient photographs is inadequate protection of anonymity. Research examining facial-image de-identification has similarly raised concerns that conventional eye masking may leave people recognizable from the rest of the face and other visual characteristics.

Publication can be much harder to reverse than research-team access

An image stored in a restricted research environment has a limited audience. A photograph placed in an article, conference recording, institutional repository, website, or social-media post may be copied, indexed, downloaded, screenshotted, redistributed, or encountered outside its original context.

This is particularly important for online and open-access publishing. Research on identifiable patient photographs has highlighted concerns about the ease with which published images can circulate beyond their original journal context. Once an identifiable image is publicly distributed, withdrawing it from the original source may not remove copies elsewhere.

Current COPE guidance for medical case-report consent similarly recommends making clear that anonymity cannot be guaranteed once material is published and that consent cannot simply be revoked after publication in the same way it might be before dissemination.

Participants should therefore understand the relevant dissemination context before publication rather than discovering afterward that "publication" meant unrestricted global web access.

Consent should be specific enough for the intended use

How specific consent must be depends on the applicable ethical and legal framework, but researchers should avoid ambiguous permission such as "I agree that my photograph may be used for research" when the actual plan is to publish an identifiable portrait online.

Relevant questions may include whether the image will appear in an academic article, thesis, conference presentation, teaching material, public website, repository, media communication, or another format; whether access will be restricted or public; and whether the image may remain available online after publication.

For identifiable patient material, ICMJE goes further and recommends written informed consent for publication, including showing the identifiable patient the manuscript to be published and disclosing potential Internet availability. Researchers should also check the requirements of the particular journal or venue because publisher policies vary.

A photograph may reveal more than the participant's identity

Visual disclosure is not limited to a face. A photograph may reveal health information, disability, religion-related clothing or practices, political activity, socioeconomic circumstances, a precise location, children or bystanders, documents in the background, computer screens, institutional affiliations, or other sensitive contextual information.

The researcher should therefore inspect the entire image before dissemination. Cropping or removing unnecessary background information may sometimes reduce disclosure while preserving the relevant visual evidence.

Other people in the photograph matter too

A participant's permission does not automatically resolve the privacy interests of everyone else visible in the image. Photographs taken in classrooms, workplaces, homes, community spaces, clinics, or public events may capture bystanders who did not participate in the research or did not agree to publication.

Before dissemination, researchers should check the full frame rather than concentrating exclusively on the focal participant. Where other identifiable people appear, additional consent, editing, exclusion of the image, or another approach may be necessary depending on the circumstances and applicable requirements.

De-identification must not distort the scientific meaning

Sometimes an image can be cropped, masked, or otherwise modified while preserving the evidence it was intended to show. In other cases, modification could conceal or alter the very feature the researcher is reporting.

ICMJE specifically cautions that when identifying characteristics are de-identified, authors should ensure that the changes do not distort scientific meaning. This creates a genuine trade-off rather than a simple instruction to blur everything.

If adequate protection would make the photograph scientifically misleading, the researcher may need to seek appropriate consent for identifiable publication, use another form of evidence, or omit the image.

A photograph taken for analysis is proposed for a conference slide

The fact that the photograph was validly collected answers only the first part of the problem. Publication or presentation creates a new disclosure context that deserves its own review.

Common mistakes when publishing participant photographs

Review the photograph as a new disclosure, not merely as existing research data

Before inserting a participant photograph into a manuscript or presentation, ask whether the audience needs to see the identifiable image and whether the participant agreed to that use. Then inspect what else the photograph reveals.

For identifiable photographs, consent is not merely a box to tick after the manuscript is written. The intended audience and form of dissemination should ideally be considered when the image is collected, because retrofitting publication permission months or years later can be difficult or impossible.

Before using a participant photograph in a research output

Questions about photographs in publications and presentations

Taking the photograph and publishing it are not the same permission

How to Cite This Guide

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