APA
Watch Video: APA Citation Style for a quick introduction to APA citations.
See the APA Citation Style Guide for an excellent list of sample citations and guidance on doing in-text citations.
Consult the Purdue OWL Writing Lab APA Formatting and Style Guide for an overview of how the APA style works, both in writing your paper and in creating citations.
If you are interested in using a citation manager to gather your research source citations and format them as needed, see our Citation Managers guide.
You may also see the Citing Sources page of the library site for a number of useful links and tips for information on how cite your sources and also some tools that will help you do so. And whatever you do, don't forget the ability to email yourself an APA, MLA, or Chicago citation from Articles & More and other databases. If you don't know how to do this, just ask me!
Here is the general MLA format to use when citing online images. The rule is to fill out as many of the citation elements shown in the example (while understanding that some of them are difficult or impossible to identify):
Creator’s Last name, First name. “Title of the digital image.” Title of the website, First name Last name of any contributors, Version (if applicable), Number (if applicable), Publisher, Publication date, URL.
Here is the same sort of format to use in APA for citing an online image:
Artist or Author. (Year of image creation). Description or title of image [Image format]. Retrieved from http://www.someaddress.com/full/url/
When a person creates an image – or another type of intellectual property – the copyright to that piece of work is automatically assigned to the creator, which means they can decide how it is used and distributed.
It’s by no means impossible to use an image that is copyright-protected – you just need to get a license or other permission to use it from the creator first. Below are the most common ways to legally obtain and use an image.
1. Paid licensing
A licensing fee is paid to use the image. The type of licensing can vary, controlled by the copyright owner. Restrictions may apply to editorial or commercial use, and platform-based limitations are common as well, regarding online or offline use.
2. Fair use
In the case of fair use, the copyrighted picture can only be used for educational, personal or research purposes, or if it’s beneficial to the public.
3. Creative Commons (CC)
Under a Creative Commons license, the copyright owner allows use and distribution to image users under certain conditions. In most cases, giving image credit properly is key, but first and most of all, image users must get acquainted with the types and rules of the different CC licenses.
4. Public domain
When an image belongs to the public domain, it means that it is not subject to copyright. Common cases are when the owner of the work passed away or abandoned all rights to the work. However, crediting the picture might still be needed based on what the requirements are, for example in the case of the Getty Search Gateway project.
** Copyright explainer accessed 01/30/23 from https://www.pixsy.com/academy/image-user/using-copyrighted-images/ **
Use this handout for detailed steps for finding Creative Commons images using Google Image Search.