Publication is not straightforward. For example, if I publish an article in a Springer journal, Springer owns the copyright on it. They, not I (the scholar), have published it and are making money off of it. It is my experience in publishing scholarly work that inclusion of other figures is often considered to be copyright violation and not fair use.
And let's say that he's self-published, or used some service where he owns the copyright. Even then, he can't change the license on something just because of "fair use". He is free to publish his article under Creative Commons, or license the figure, but he can't do both.
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Publication is not straightforward. For example, if I publish an article in a Springer journal, Springer owns the copyright on it. They, not I (the scholar), have published it and are making money off of it. It is my experience in publishing scholarly work that inclusion of other figures is often considered to be copyright violation and not fair use.
And let's say that he's self-published, or used some service where he owns the copyright. Even then, he can't change the license on something just because of "fair use". He is free to publish his article under Creative Commons, or license the figure, but he can't do both.