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APA Guide

7th Edition

About Citing Figures, Tables, and Images

APA has specific rules for providing in-text citations and references for images, tables reproduced from another source, and tables created using data from another source.

These materials are generally protected by copyright and require you to receive and indicate that you have received permission from the copyright holder.  Another option is to see if your use of the material falls under fair use. 

Because many images found online are made available through creative commons licenses, they do not require copyright permission letters.  However, you do still need to provide information about access and the creator for your readers and publisher.

Citing the Image in Your Paper

So how did we come up with this?

Footnote, Part 1

Note: Reproduced from “Infographic: Cardiovascular Disease Deaths in Low and Middle-Income Countries,” by CDC Global, 2015, Flickr.com.

Use "Reproduced from" if you are using the original figure.  Use "Adapted from" if you have modified another researcher's figure.

  • Title of the article in quotation marks, capitalized in Title Case (See #3)
  • Author (See #1): Note that an author may be a person or an organization.
  • Year of publication (See #2)
  • Title of Web Site (See #4): This is italicized (CTRL-I)
  • Retrieval information (See #5): Rather than including a really long URL, use the “Share” button to get the shortened version of the URL. Remove the hyperlink for this by right-clicking on the link and selecting remove hyperlink or by using the short CTRL-K.
  • Copyright information

Footnote, Part 2

Next, APA requires Copyright permission and attribution.

Copyright 2015 by CDC Global (https://flic.kr/ps/2mHk9t2mHk9t2mHk9t2mHk9t). Reprinted courtesy of the Copyright Holder under a Creative Commons License CC BY 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/)

  1. Copyright date is also a creation date, which in this case is the year 2015 (See #2).
  2. The copyright holder on this is the creator/author, so click on the author’s name (See #1) to get the creator’s account. Creative Commons requires the hyperlink back to the original image and author. On the creator’s page, find the Share button (in red below) and copy the shortened URL.  Add the URL to the author’s name by highlighting the name, right click, and paste in the URL.

3. Next you include how you received copyright permission to use this image.  Because permission is granted through Creative Commons rather than a letter, include the Creative Commons’ information.  The license information can be found by clicking the link at #6.

4. Include the abbreviation of what the license is (see the red box below). Also include the URL to the definition of what the license is (see the blue box below).

You will also put the proper APA reference for the web page in your Reference page.

CDC Global. (2015, April 8). Infographic: Cardiovascular disease deaths in low and middle income countries. Flickr.com. Retrieved from https://flic.kr/p/s1XQry

 

Tables and other supplemental materials are placed after the Reference page.

If you have taken the data for the table or the entire table from another source, include access information in the Note.

To include in the Note's access information:

Use "Reproduced from" if you are using the entire table.  Use "Adapted from" if you have modified another researcher's table or if you have created the table from someone else's data.

  • Title of the article in quotation marks, capitalized in Title Case
  • Authors, names listed in First Initial. Middle Initial. Last Name order 
  • Year of publication
  • Journal Title and volume (in italics)
  • Page the Table or data was taken from
  • Copyright information
  • Permission information (if you have received it): Reprinted (or adapted) with permission

You will also put the proper APA reference for the entire journal article in your Reference page.

Keys, K. M., Susser, E., Cheslack-Postava, K., Fountain, C., Liu, K., Bearman, P.S. (2012). Cohort effects explain the increase autism diagnosis among children born from 1992 to 2003 in California. International Journal of Epidemiology, 41(2), 495-503. doi: 10.1093/ije/dyt193

 

Though it is not always clear, assume that images are protected by copyright unless they say otherwise.  Assume that all images found online, even freely online, are protected by copyright.

 

Use "Reproduced from" if you are using the original figure.  Use "Adapted from" if you have modified another researcher's figure.

  • Title of the article in quotation marks, capitalized in Title Case
  • Authors, names listed in First Initial. Middle Initial. Last Name order 
  • Year of publication
  • Journal Title and volume (in italics)
  • Page the Table or data was taken from
  • Copyright holder's information
  • Copyright permission information

You will also put the proper APA reference for the entire journal article in your Reference page.

Bauman, M. D., & Schumann, C. M. (2013). Is 'bench-to-bedside' realistic for autism?' An integrative neuroscience approach. Neuropsychiatry, 3(2),159-168. doi:10.2217/npy.13.18

 

Though it is not always clear, assume that images are protected by copyright unless they say otherwise.

Use "Reproduced from" if you are using the original figure.  Use "Adapted from" if you have modified another researcher's figure.

  • Title of the article in quotation marks, capitalized in Title Case
  • Authors, names listed in First Initial. Middle Initial. Last Name order 
  • Year of publication
  • Journal Title and volume (in italics)
  • Page the Table or data was taken from
  • Copyright information
  • Creative Commons License information
    • 1) Insert a hyperlink to the Copyright holder (in this example Frontiers in). This link should go to the original image or figure.
    • 2) Indicate the type of Creative Commons license (provided with the image)
    • 3) Insert a hyperlink to the Creative Commons license type.  This should be provided with the image.  A complete list can be found here: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ 
    • 4) Include the link to the Creative Commons license type in parentheses (this should match the URL in the hyperlink from step 3)

You will also put the proper APA reference for the entire journal article in your Reference page.

Deshpande, G., Libero, L. E., Sreenivasan, K. R, Deshpande, H. D., & Kana, R. K. (2013). Identification of neural connectivity signatures of autism using machine learning. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 7, 670-680. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2013.00670