Preserving and disseminating your scientific images

MédiHal is an open archive which enables to deposit visual and audio data (still images, videos and sounds), produced as part of scientific research. These data are stored in a secured warehouse, with backup copies of files and of their metadata.

Just like the HAL open archive, MédiHAL is based upon self-archiving by french scientists (researchers, lecturers-researchers) and supervision staff members in superior education and research. Self-archiving is strongly encouraged so as to increase visibility, accessibility, diffusion speed and impact of iconographic data.

MédiHAL is developed through the Center for Direct Scientific Communication (CCSD) and the National centre for the digitisation of visual sources (CN2SV) of the CNRS, and with the support of the ADONIS Scholar Infrastructure of the CNRS. Since june 2010, all photos and images hosted in MédiHAL are archived for long term at CINES (Montpellier) by the OAIS process.

Geo-localisation of submitted data

The images deposited in MédiHAL can be geo-referenced. This geo-referencing is integrated to the deposition form by a cartographic access coupled with the GeoNames.org geographical referential. The images containing GPS metadata will be automatically positioned on the map.

Share images and photos

MédiHAL’s users are governed by common good usage rules of data in the scientific world: respect for original works and authors’ quotation, with institutional authorizations. The author transmits to MédiHAL, on a non-exclusive basis, the right to diffuse his/her work in conditions of free and non-restricted access. The intellectual property of the documents deposited remains entirely with the author(s). It is also possible to franchise the deposited data under Creative Commons. These licences define various frameworks of use of the data.