Cannot Cite Picture Such as Digital Image or Screenshot (Figure or Artwork?)

edited July 10, 2019
Citing an image differs from any similar existing type (Artwork) that ZoteroBib provides (tested using zbib.org 2019-07-08).

According to apaformat.org, use figure citation (rather long for an in-text citation but apparently proper):

Figure number. Description or title of image. From Title of Book (p. xxx), by Author, year, Place of Publication: Publisher. Copyright [year] by the Name of Copyright Holder. Reprinted [or adapted] with permission.
Example: Figure 1. Depression. From Psychiatric Health (p. 2), by L. M. Anderson, 1992, New York, NY: Scott. Copyright [1992] by Jill Crowne. Reprinted with permission.
(with Figure number and Title of Book capitalized; show "Reprinted" or "Adapted" based on a dropdown box in the ZoteroBib ui)
- https://apaformat.org/apa-image-citation/

Therefore, you could implement two choices that use the same format: Picture and Figure, using the same fields, list entry notation, and (in-text) citation notation, unless you see issues (any differences).

* You may end up being more accurate than citationmachine.net which is often recommended by colleges and schools. I've seen it fall short before, but I'll show its way below just for reference.

citationmachine.net and other cites would have further information on MLA and Chicago formats regarding images, but the citationmachine's generator for images is not easily discovered (I had to use Google): https://www.citationmachine.net/apa/cite-a-image/manual

According to https://www.citationmachine.net, The APA way to cite a digital image would be something like:
Smith, J. (n.d.). GNOME Dash [Screenshot of the Dash screen of the GNOME Desktop running on Debian]. Retrieved July 8, 2019, from https://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=debian

(with hanging indent as usual; nothing italicized)
and the in-text citation would be something like:
(Smith, "GNOME Dash", n.d., p. 1)
...but the "Name" field (GNOME Dash in this case) would only be present in either case if the image has an official name. I only included it in this case for demonstration purposes.
However, according to apaformat.org, the above (in-text) citation is incorrect, and figure citation should be used instead, which makes more sense
  • Figure captions and references to images are not the same thing conceptually. Zotero handles the latter and not the former and the only way to use Zotero for captions is to use a completely different citation style and copy&paste with that.

    As for image references, Zotero handles these correctly.
    (note that APAformat.org is neither accurate nor authoritative in any way)

  • edited July 9, 2019
    Thanks for that information. I have a hard time finding anything authoritative outside of buying a copy of the APA manual, and I haven't resorted to that yet. I usually have to use a web search, and then I try to stick to results that are on apastyle or Purdue Owl. The official blog (blog.apaonline.org) doesn't seem to contain much style information. However, https://apastyle.apa.org/index appears to be an official site of the APA, so maybe I should stick to that. You say that Zotero handles images correctly. If that is the case, I seem to be misunderstanding the relationship between the Zotero platform and zbib.org. Is there some reason that zbib.org wouldn't have a picture option?
  • image = artwork in this context.
  • There is currently a bug with Artwork items in zbib.org I believe. @dstillman
  • ah right, yes -- artwork in zbib doesn't include the creator/author, which does lead to incorrect citations there. That should be fixed soon.
  • The artwork creator mapping is now fixed.
  • Thanks. I am able to get the following output:

    Smith, J. (2019). The Dash screen of the GNOME Desktop running on Debian [Screenshot]. Retrieved from https://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=debian

    (title italicized, except part in brackets)

    Which matches one of a few suggested artwork reference list notations on the APA official blog:
    https://blog.apastyle.org/apastyle/2010/04/theres-an-art-to-it.html
    The reason there are only suggested reference list notations is that it is a derived format as APA doesn't define the notation for artwork atomically.

    I suppose this is resolved, though having a figure (in-text) citation feature (citing a figure from another work as I described earlier), which APA defines better would of course be great.
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