This page will provide information about how to incorporate sources, including open educational resources and scholarly sources, in your writing. Watch the video below to get started.

An attribution allows authors who reuse, modify, or reshare content based on openly-licensed works to gives credit to the original creator. You give credit to OER that you use or adapt by adding attribution statements that include the TASL elements:

• Title of the original work (chapter, excerpt, photo, media, etc.)
• Author or creator of the original work (with a link back to their profile page if available),
• Source URL of the original work (hyperlinked in the title)
• License of the original work (hyperlinked to corresponding CC license page)

Example Attribution Statement

“Along The Bund, Shanghai, China” by Victor Wong (sfe-co2) is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.
 

How is this different from a citation?

A citation allows authors to provide the source of any quotations, ideas, and information that they include in their own work based on the copyrighted works of other authors. Citations are used when you are responding to or crediting the ideas of others, and it is the mechanism by which scholarly conversations occur. Citations are formatted according to a specific citation style, such as MLA, and often restrict how much of the source material you can use. However, when you are writing open resources, you are free to reuse as much openly-licensed material as you wish, provided that you attribute it correctly and abide by the other terms of the licenses.

For more information about citation and MLA, visit the library guide linked below.

Recommendations

• Use images with an open license (see resources linked in the sidebar)
• Create your own images/artwork

How to add images and attribution information

Follow these instructions to add and edit media in Pressbooks:

1. Upload the image file.
2. On the right panel, there are several fields that may autopoulate from the file you uploaded. Edit or add information in the Caption field (the caption will appear with your image in the chapter).
3. Add alternative text for accessibility purposes.
4. Add the attribution information:
   • Title of the image
   • Source URL (where you found the image)
   • Author and Author URL, if available
   • License of the image
5. The information you enter will create a “Media Attributions” section in your chapter. If you forget to add this information after uploading, you can edit the data from the Media Library.

Note that your final chapter will have:

1. Works Cited, MLA style
2. Attributions, for OER used 
3. Media Attributions, using info you enter for images or videos

Pressbooks: How to add media

Watch this video to see a walkthrough of adding media to your chapters (view 30:20 - 36:30).