How to Cite a Figure or Table Reproduced from Another Source

How to Cite a Reproduced Figure or Table: Quick Answer

Number and title the object as your style requires, then credit the source next to it. APA 7 puts the credit in the figure or table note, beginning From (unchanged) or Adapted from (changed), and still lists the source in the reference list. MLA 9 puts the source in the caption under a figure (Fig. 1.) or in a Source: line under a table; a works-cited entry is required only if that caption is incomplete or you also cite the work in the text. Chicago 18 ends the caption with a credit line or puts a Source: note under a table, and cites the work in a note and the bibliography only when you also use it in the text — or when your department wants every source listed. None of the three styles puts a parenthetical citation under the picture in place of the credit.

The Lantagne–Furman line is the Publication Manual copyright-attribution specimen reprinted by Augusta from p. 391. The Cassatt caption is the MLA Style Center sample. The semicolons in the full MLA caption and source line follow the Style Center's rule for captions that give complete publication details (6 December 2018). The complete-caption rule is the MLA Handbook sentence campus guides reprint (Southern University; Purdue OWL). The Girouard line is the CMOS credit-line specimen campus copyright guides reprint. CMOS 18 §14.30 no longer requires a place of publication in an ordinary book note; the printed credit-line example still includes New Haven because that is how the manual showed the permission sentence.

Reprinted, adapted, or built from someone's data?

Settle what you did to the object before you write the credit. All three styles distinguish an exact copy from a modified copy, and all three treat a new table or chart you drew from another author's numbers as your object with a citation, not as a reproduction. CMOS 18 gives adapted material its own paragraph at §3.38; APA encodes the same split as From versus Adapted from.

• Reprinted (reproduced): you copied the figure or table without changing content. The image file, the scan, or the same rows and columns retyped verbatim all count. APA writes From; Chicago writes Reproduced from, Reprinted from, or Reproduced by permission from; MLA simply cites the source in the caption.
• Adapted: you cropped, recolored, translated labels, dropped a column, merged two panels, or redrew the chart from the same values. APA writes Adapted from; Chicago writes Adapted from (§3.38); MLA still cites the source and may say adapted from in the caption text.
• Built from the data: you took numbers out of the source's text or tables and made your own table or graph. That is your own object. Cite the data with an ordinary citation in the note or caption (Data from… / Data are from…). Facts themselves are not copyrightable; no permission is needed for the numbers.

APA 7: figure number, title, image, and a copyright attribution in the note

APA 7 gives figures and tables the same stack: a bold number (Figure 1), an italic title in title case on the next line, the object itself, then an italic Note. below it. The figure setup and table setup pages show the layout; Alamo reprints the table-setup wording.

When the object is reprinted or adapted, the Publication Manual requires a copyright attribution in that general note and a reference-list entry for the source (§7.7 for the note; §§12.14–12.18 for what needs the fuller acknowledgment). The attribution replaces the in-text citation for the figure: do not add (Lantagne & Furman, 2017) under the picture as well. Write Reprinted with permission or Adapted with permission only if you obtained it.

Official journal reprint: Lantagne and Furman (2017)

Ann Lantagne and Wyndol Furman's article is real: Developmental Psychology 53, no. 9 (2017): 1738–1749, DOI 10.1037/dev0000363. Page 1744 falls inside that range and is the page the Publication Manual cites. The printed figure caption on that article is "Figure 1. Interaction between age and relationship length on ratings of support." The italic APA title below uses that wording in title case. The Publication Manual uses the article as the copyrighted-journal specimen when no extra permission sentence is required — typical of an APA-owned journal figure reused in another APA paper.

**Figure 1**
*Interaction Between Age and Relationship Length on Ratings of Support*
[image]
*Note.* From “Romantic Relationship Development: The Interplay Between Age and Relationship Length,” by A. Lantagne and W. Furman, 2017, *Developmental Psychology*, *53*(9), p. 1744 (https://doi.org/10.1037/dev0000363). Copyright 2017 by American Psychological Association.

The attribution uses the same facts as the reference entry in a different order: title first, then by and the authors with initials before surnames, the year, the source, the page, and the DOI or URL in parentheses. Article titles take quotation marks and title case here, even though the reference list gives them in sentence case without quotation marks. Book and periodical titles are italic.

Official Creative Commons adaptation: Ghalibaf et al. (2019)

The manual's Creative Commons journal specimen is Azadeh Kamel Ghalibaf, Elham Nazari, Mahdi Gholian-Aval, and Mahmood Tara, "Comprehensive Overview of Computer-Based Health Information Tailoring: A Systematic Scoping Review," BMJ Open 9 (2019): e021022. The article is live at 10.1136/bmjopen-2017-021022; the short DOI in the official note is https://doi.org/cz6h. BMJ Open uses a CC BY-NC licence, so the note ends CC BY-NC. and not a permission sentence.

Official book adaptation: Chapman and Rosenthal (2016)

The manual's authored-book specimen is Alexander L. Chapman and M. Zachary Rosenthal, Managing Therapy-Interfering Behavior: Strategies From Dialectical Behavior Therapy (American Psychological Association, 2016), p. 172, DOI 10.1037/14752-000. Page and edition data sit in parentheses after the title, which is where APA puts both.

**Table 2**
*Selected Strategies for Therapy-Interfering Behavior*
[table]
*Note.* Adapted from *Managing Therapy-Interfering Behavior: Strategies From Dialectical Behavior Therapy* (p. 172), by A. L. Chapman and M. Z. Rosenthal, 2016, American Psychological Association (https://doi.org/10.1037/14752-000). Copyright 2016 by the American Psychological Association.

Official chapter reprint that needed permission: Yellepeddi (2015)

When the rights holder is not APA and you did obtain permission, the manual adds the permission sentence. The edited-chapter specimen is Vijay Yellepeddi, "Pharmacokinetics," in Karen Whalen (Ed.), Pharmacology (6th ed., p. 2), 2015, Wolters Kluwer.

The page range pp. 1–20 on the reference line is a labelled reconstruction of a typical chapter span; the official note cites only p. 2. If you opened a later edition of Whalen, cite the edition in your hand.

Public domain and Creative Commons stock images

Works of the U.S. federal government are in the public domain, so a CDC or Census figure ends In the public domain. and needs no permission sentence. The Publication Manual's webpage specimen is the 2017 CDC infographic What Parents Can Expect in Behavior Therapy. The URL printed in that note, https://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/adhd/infographics/what-parents-expect.html, now 404s. Cite the official string only if you actually used an archived copy. If you opened CDC's current parent-training page or the September 2025 PDF, cite that file.

A Creative Commons photograph that requires credit uses the clip-art pattern. Alamo's reprint of the official sled-dog specimen is the one to copy, including the italics on the title in the reference and the roman title in the note.

Your own figure from someone else's data

If you drew a new chart from values printed in Lantagne and Furman's results, the chart is yours. There is nothing to reprint, so there is no copyright attribution and no From. Credit the numbers with a normal in-text citation inside the note, and keep the reference-list entry. The Publication Manual's data-from wording for a Census table begins Data are from.

**Figure 2**
*Support Scores Across Age and Relationship Length*
[your chart]
*Note.* Data are from Lantagne and Furman (2017). Error bars show 95% confidence intervals.

The Census line above keeps the official Data are from / In the public domain pattern and the real NST-EST2018-01 table title. Augusta’s reprint of p. 391 swapped the 2010 start year for 2020 and used a bit.ly URL; do not copy those two errors. Open the Census 2010s state-total tables and cite the file you actually downloaded.

MLA 9: a caption under the figure, a source line under the table

MLA 9 labels illustrations Fig. with an arabic numeral and puts the caption directly below the image. Tables are different: the label Table 1 and the title go on separate lines above the table, and the source and any lettered notes go below it. The Style Center caption post (28 June 2017) and the formatting PDF show both. The handbook's own short caption sample sets the pattern: creator in normal order, elements in works-cited order, commas, period.

A fuller caption for a chart reprinted from an article adds from and the article facts, still in normal name order. Because that caption gives full publication details, the Style Center (6 December 2018) turns the periods of the works-cited entry into semicolons and keeps the commas inside the journal container; a short caption like Cassatt's keeps commas throughout. If you also quote or paraphrase that article, add the works-cited entry. The Style Center's images-in-books note (7 August 2017) is the other common case: you are discussing a figure printed in a book, not pasting it, and a parenthetical figure number plus a book entry is enough.

Keep Dodwell's tales as the Style Center printed it. The Velázquez line is the "work contained in another work" form: the painting first, then Cumming's book. When the reproduced figure is an artwork you pasted, the caption follows the image pattern in How to Cite a Painting, Photograph, or Artwork in MLA.

Tables in MLA and the complete-caption rule

Give the table a label and a title flush left on separate lines above the grid. Below the grid, introduce the source with Source: and give the bibliographic facts in note form — names in normal order, not inverted. Letter the table's own notes a, b, c so they are not mistaken for footnotes to the prose. The handbook's rule on the works-cited list is narrow:

Table 1
Support by Age and Relationship Length
[table]
Source: Ann Lantagne and Wyndol Furman; "Romantic Relationship Development: The Interplay between Age and Relationship Length"; *Developmental Psychology*, vol. 53, no. 9, 2017, p. 1744.
a. Values are model-implied means from the published interaction.

In practice most papers also quote or paraphrase the article, so the entry ends up in the list anyway. If your instructor wants every source listed, add it; a duplicate is never wrong, a missing entry is.

Referring to figures and tables in MLA prose

In running prose MLA lowercases the label: fig. 1, table 2. Put the pointer in parentheses or in the sentence, and keep the page reference to the original in the caption rather than repeating the source in the parenthetical. An in-text citation of the article itself still uses author and page: (Lantagne and Furman 1744).

Chicago 18: captions, credit lines, and source notes

Chicago handles reproduction in Chapter 3 of the manual (illustrations and tables), not in the citation chapters. CMOS 18 retitled and renumbered the credit-line paragraphs. They are now §§3.30–3.38, not the CMOS 17 pair §3.29–3.37. CSUSB points caption wording at §3.21: sentence case, usually below the illustration, period after the figure number. A table gets its number and title above, then a source note below introduced by Source: (§3.78), then general notes and lettered notes (§§3.79–3.80).

Chicago's standard credit-line vocabulary is Reproduced by permission from, Courtesy of, Photograph by, Adapted from, and Data from. If the work already appears in the bibliography, the credit may be shortened. If it appears only in the credit line, a full form is safer. The live Notes and Bibliography and Author-Date Quick Guides still omit a place of publication for post-1900 books (§14.30).

Girouard (Yale, 1978) and Schaller (University of Chicago Press, 1985) are the handbook's book-permission examples. The Lambeth Palace frontispiece is the handbook's archival-permission example: the credit names the rights holders, not a modern citation of the 1569 book. Use the wording the permission letter requires when it differs.

When you also cite the source in the text

A source that appears only in a credit line does not have to be in the bibliography. Add it when the work is also cited in the text, or when your department wants every source you drew on listed — Turabian-based student templates usually do. Number figures and tables in separate sequences, and refer to them in prose in lowercase: see figure 1, as table 2 shows. The Chicago footnote generator builds the note; the credit line is a sentence you write. The live Quick Guide book and journal samples below are the ones to reuse if you also discuss the work.

The two Kwon caption lines after the official notes are labelled reconstructions of CMOS §3.31 / §3.38, not handbook specimens. They reuse Kwon's real article and omit a figure number because this page did not open Kwon's PDF to confirm one. Add a figure locator only from the copy in your hand.

Tables: the Source: line

CMOS 18 §3.78 puts the acknowledgment of borrowed data in a source note under the table, introduced by Source: (italic in the manual's examples). A table you copied verbatim begins Source: plus the citation; a table you built from published numbers begins Source: Data from. Auckland's CMOS 18 tables page restates that split and warns that a thesis deposited in a public repository is a publication for permission purposes.

Table 1. Support by age and relationship length
[table]
*Source:* Data from Ann Lantagne and Wyndol Furman, "Romantic Relationship Development: The Interplay between Age and Relationship Length," *Developmental Psychology* 53, no. 9 (2017): 1744, https://doi.org/10.1037/dev0000363.
*Note:* Values are model-implied means.
a Provisional grouping.

Public domain, courtesy lines, and author photographs in Chicago

Chicago prefers the shortest true statement of the legal basis (§§3.35–3.36). Material obtained free of charge is credited Courtesy of; public-domain material is credited to its source without a permission phrase; a Creative Commons licence is named at the end of the credit. Your own photograph or drawing is Photograph by the author or Drawing by the author (§3.32). That last case is the your-own-photograph guide, not this one.

Chicago author-date

Credit lines do not change between the two Chicago systems; only the citation of the source in the text does. In author-date, the caption or source note may use a short parenthetical, and the full entry lives in the reference list with the year after the authors.

Copyright, fair use, and the permission line

A correct credit line is not a licence. Citation answers who made this; copyright answers may I copy it. For most coursework the answer is yes: reproducing one figure in a paper that is read by an instructor and never distributed is a standard fair-use case under 17 U.S.C. § 107 (educational, non-commercial, a small portion, no effect on the market), and comparable teaching exceptions exist in the UK, EU, Canada, and Australia. The moment the paper is published — a journal article, a book chapter, a thesis deposited in an open repository, a conference poster, a public website — fair use becomes a judgment call and publishers usually require written permission for any figure or table that is not public domain or openly licensed. Auckland states the repository cutoff in one sentence: if the work will be uploaded to a public research repository, ask the rights holder. The plagiarism guide covers the separate academic-integrity question: an uncredited reproduction is plagiarism regardless of copyright status.

• CC BY — reuse and adapt with credit. Name the licence in the credit line.
• CC BY-SA — as CC BY, and your adaptation must carry the same licence; unusual in a paper but relevant to a website.
• CC BY-NC — no commercial reuse. A course paper is fine; a textbook is not. Ghalibaf et al. 2019 is this licence.
• CC BY-ND — no adaptations. You may reprint the figure unchanged but may not crop, recolor, or redraw it.
• CC0 / public domain dedication — no credit legally required, but every citation style still requires one academically.

Quick comparison

Common mistakes

• Putting (Author, Year) under the figure instead of a credit line. All three styles use the note, caption, or credit line for a reproduced object.
• Writing From in APA when you changed the figure. Any modification, including cropping and relabeling, makes it Adapted from.
• Claiming Reprinted with permission in a class paper when no permission was requested. Either drop the sentence or state the real basis (In the public domain, CC BY 2.0).
• Forgetting the reference-list entry in APA. The copyright attribution never replaces it.
• Using an APA-style caption below the figure in an APA paper. Since the seventh edition the number and title go above; only the note goes below.
• Inverting the author's name in an MLA caption or a Chicago credit line. Those are running text, so Ann Lantagne, not Lantagne, Ann.
• Putting an MLA table's title below the table. Tables take the label and title above; only illustrations take a caption below.
• Citing a figure you redrew from published numbers as a reproduction. It is your figure with Data from, and it needs no permission.
• Treating an old painting's museum photograph as public domain without checking. The painting may be; the museum's photograph may carry its own terms.
• Reprinting a CC BY-ND figure with your own annotations. ND forbids adaptation.
• Copying Augusta's bit.ly Census URL or its 2020 start-year slip. Use the Census table you opened.
• Pasting the 2017 CDC infographic URL into a new paper. That address now 404s; cite the live CDC page or PDF you actually opened.

Related guides and official manuals

• How to Cite an Image or Artwork in APA 7
• How to Cite a Painting, Photograph, or Artwork in MLA
• How to Present Data in Tables and Figures
• How to Cite Sources in a Presentation
• How to Cite Your Own Photograph
• How to Avoid Plagiarism
• How to Cite a Dataset in APA
• How to cite an image in APA: worked examples
• APA Style: tables and figures
• APA Style: figure setup
• APA Style: table setup
• APA Style: clip art or stock image references
• Augusta University: APA 7 copyright attribution (manual p. 391)
• Alamo Colleges: clip art or stock image (29 May 2026 reprint)
• MLA Style Center: formatting figure captions
• MLA Style Center: punctuating citations in captions
• MLA Style Center: images reproduced in books
• Chicago Manual of Style 18: Chapter 3 contents
• Chicago Notes-Bibliography citation guide
• Chicago Author-Date citation guide
• 17 U.S.C. § 107 (fair use)