Using images, tables & other visual material in your work

Citations

The citation for a figure appears in the caption for the figure, after any title or description.

 In referencing, whether information appears in the form of an image, a table or text is unimportant: what matters is what kind of source that information appears in. So, if a figure appears in a book, the citation is a normal book citation, just the same as when referencing text or ideas; if a figure appear on a webpage, the citation is a normal webpage citation; and so on.

If you have copied the figure, you would include the page number or equivalent where the figure appears, in exactly the same way as quoting text.

References

If a source has a citation, it will have corresponding reference in your reference list.

There is nothing special you need to do to reference figures. As with citations, it is a normal reference for the kind of source in which the figure appears.

Further information

There is much more information about referencing different sources in the Referencing at Sheffield Hallam University guide.

If a figure you create is based on or inspired by an existing source, then you need to cite and reference the source the figure appears in, in just the same way as if you wrote a passage of text based on ideas and information from an existing source.

You don’t usually need to include a citation or reference for purely decorative figures: decorative figures aren’t acting as evidence to support your arguments and ideas, and so there’s no benefit to your work in your reader being able to check the quality of original sources

A rights attribution may still be necessary if you have copied the figure from another source.

Decorative sources based on other figures

If you have created a decorative figure which is based on another, existing figure, it is good practice to acknowledge that you have done so and to credit the existing figure. Using a citation in the caption and a reference is one possible way of doing this, although in these circumstances you could use other methods of acknowledgement if they fit better with your assignment.

Certain figures- usually tables, but occasionally graphs and charts- may be created based on data taken from several sources. In this case, you can cite all the sources together: you can find out more information about how to do in the Your guide to referencing: how to use APA 7 edition guide, or the I’m using another referencing style section of the guide if your assignment doesn’t use APA. There is no need to specify what information in the table or graph came from which source, unless it is absolutely critical. 

One common subject of images in student work may be images of artworks, such as paintings, sculptures, film stills, buildings, etc. When referencing these images, the reference should always be to the source you got the image from, which is usually not the artwork itself. So if you got the image from a webpage, you cite and reference the webpage; if you got the image from a book, you cite and reference the book; and so on.

This is because the source may have edited or altered the image, whether as a choice or because of technical limitations: so it’s important for your reader to know the source of the image, as it might not accurately represent the original artwork.

You only reference the original artwork if you have direct access to a good-quality photograph or image file of the original artwork, rather than an image that has been published in another work.

Occasionally, some tables might include citations to other sources: for example, a table listing sources which have been selected through a systematic search. In these circumstances, these citations are presented almost entirely like a normal citation.  

The only difference from a regular citation is that you always use ‘&’ rather than ‘and’ when citing sources with two authors in a table, for example: 

Savage & Wright, 2021

Not:

Savage and Wright, 2021

This is just to save space, as there’s often not much room to spare in table cells! 

In your reading, you may sometimes encounter a different method of referencing figures, where a version of the reference itself appears in the caption, instead of the citation. You only need to do this if you've been given assignment or publication guidelines which tell you to do so.

In our own guidelines, we have decided not to use this method, to keep referencing figures simpler and more consistent with what is done with text sources.