Citing open sources

Added by Michael Paskevicius (Admin) on 3 Mar 2010
Who influenced your work? Citations are a great way to give attribution to the many sources of inspiration that helped you create a work. Go ahead, stand on the shoulders of a giant or an ant, but give them a name!
Examples

Following these suggestions ensures you give due credit to other creators and demonstrates to people who find your content that you truly are a part of a global learning and sharing community. No matter the content, make sure you credit the creator, provide the URL where the work is hosted, indicate if it is available under a particular license, provide a link to the license (so others can find out the license terms), link to the original resource.
 

Flickr Image

In the example to below, the photographer Sarah Macmillan (username: EssjayNZ on Flickr) has chosen to share her images on Flickr under a Creative Commons BY-NC-SA license. You can reuse this image, according to the terms of the BY-NC-SA license, as long as you provide proper attribution.
"New Zealand, Clouds - 6.10pm" by EssjayNZ - CC: BY-NC-SA

 

 


 

 

 

 

 

Wikimedia Image

In this example, the illustrator Patrick Lynch has chosen to share his medical illustrations on Wikimedia Commons under a Creative Commons Attribution only license. The citation style is very similar to the image from Flickr as both are CC licensed images available online.
 

"Head lateral mouth anatomy" by Patrick Lynch - CC:BY

 

Textual Quote

It is also important to cite all 3rd party (not created by you) content which includes things like quotations. What we were taught in high school still applies here; you should give at least the author's name and title of the work the quote is from. Bonus points if you include a page number or URL to an online version. See UCT Libraries citation guidelines for useful formatting resources.

For more information on citing open content see the document How to attribute Creative Commons licensed materials.

This page has been adapted from the Open Michigan website