How to format your references using the Multimedia Tools and Applications citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Multimedia Tools and Applications. For a complete guide how to prepare your manuscript refer to the journal's instructions to authors.

Using reference management software

Typically you don't format your citations and bibliography by hand. The easiest way is to use a reference manager:

Paperpile	The citation style is built in and you can choose it in Settings > Citation Style or Paperpile > Citation Style in Google Docs.
EndNote	Find the style here: output styles overview
Mendeley, Zotero, Papers, and others	The style is either built in or you can download a CSL file that is supported by most references management programs.
BibTeX	BibTeX syles are usually part of a LaTeX template. Check the instructions to authors if the publisher offers a LaTeX template for this journal.

Journal articles

Those examples are references to articles in scholarly journals and how they are supposed to appear in your bibliography.

Not all journals organize their published articles in volumes and issues, so these fields are optional. Some electronic journals do not provide a page range, but instead list an article identifier. In a case like this it's safe to use the article identifier instead of the page range.

A journal article with 1 author

Wine JJ (2014) Medicine. Letting go of mucus. Science 345:730–731

A journal article with 2 authors

Lipinski C, Hopkins A (2004) Navigating chemical space for biology and medicine. Nature 432:855–861

A journal article with 3 authors

Mehta MR, Lee AK, Wilson MA (2002) Role of experience and oscillations in transforming a rate code into a temporal code. Nature 417:741–746

A journal article with 5 or more authors

Potok RM, Rau IG, Shtrikman H, et al (2007) Observation of the two-channel Kondo effect. Nature 446:167–171

Books and book chapters

Here are examples of references for authored and edited books as well as book chapters.

An authored book

Tsai CS (2006) Biomacromolecules. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ

An edited book

Chazottes J-R (2005) Dynamics of Coupled Map Lattices and of Related Spatially Extended Systems. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

A chapter in an edited book

Zhao M, Song L, Fan X (2011) The Application of the Boundary Theory of Phase Diagrams to the Quaternary and Higher Number Component Phase Diagrams. In: Song L, Fan X (eds) The Boundary Theory of Phase Diagrams and Its Application: Rules for Phase Diagram Construction with Phase Regions and Their Boundaries. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, pp 92–106

Web sites

Sometimes references to web sites should appear directly in the text rather than in the bibliography. Refer to the Instructions to authors for Multimedia Tools and Applications.

Blog post

Andrew E (2014) Scientists Get First Look Inside Mysterious Siberian Crater. In: IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/environment/scientists-get-first-look-inside-mysterious-siberian-crater/. Accessed 30 Oct 2018

Reports

This example shows the general structure used for government reports, technical reports, and scientific reports. If you can't locate the report number then it might be better to cite the report as a book. For reports it is usually not individual people that are credited as authors, but a governmental department or agency like "U. S. Food and Drug Administration" or "National Cancer Institute".

Government report

Government Accountability Office (1975) Programs at the U.S. Army School of the Americas in Panama. U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC

Theses and dissertations

Theses including Ph.D. dissertations, Master's theses or Bachelor theses follow the basic format outlined below.

Doctoral dissertation

HaMai T (2014) The “other” women: What about the experiences of women faculty of color in community colleges? Doctoral dissertation, California State University, Long Beach

News paper articles

Unlike scholarly journals, news papers do not usually have a volume and issue number. Instead, the full date and page number is required for a correct reference.

New York Times article

Sisario B (2017) On Adele’s Big Night, She Lauds Beyoncé. New York Times C1

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by sequential numbers in square brackets:

This sentence cites one reference [1].
This sentence cites two references [1, 2].
This sentence cites four references [1–4].

About the journal

Full journal title	Multimedia Tools and Applications
Abbreviation	Multimed. Tools Appl.
ISSN (print)	1380-7501
ISSN (online)	1573-7721
Scope	Computer Networks and Communications Hardware and Architecture Software Media Technology