Image Research Guide

The Importance of Citing Images

Images and other non-textual materials (e.g., film stills, illustrations, graphs, maps, websites, etc.) should include proper citations in presentations, research papers and attribution in publications and theses. As scholars, we want to acknowledge and support intellectual ownership and scholarly work. The more you cite the more others can reference your research for continued scholarship!

To format image citations, refer to the style guides on the left. This research guide is a brief overview on citing images and does not include a comprehensive list of image citation examples. Please reach out to your subject librarians if you have specific citation questions.

Citing Images
It is important to include the details about the artwork, the copyright owner, and the image source in your figure title or image citation. It is not necessary to include this information in your bibliography if your image caption provides complete information about the source. 

1. Image Citations: The citation contains enough information as necessary to locate the image. This also contains descriptive information about the image (title, creator, date, etc.) and the image source (where you found the image). 

2. Image Attribution: includes descriptive information about the artwork (citation and source) and the proper credit to the copyright owner (attribution or credit line from the copyright owner and if necessary, permission to include the image in your thesis or publication). 
    

NOTE: Thesis students should be using Image Attribution and are encouraged to determine the copyright status of work, complete a fair use analysis, and identify if they need to get image permissions from the copyright holder to use images of their work.