Tallinn University of Technology

Formatting guidelines

Formatting guidelines

TalTech guidelines for writing papers (including dissertations).

Citing

Everything you have cited in the text of your work (books, journal articles, web pages, etc), should be listed at the end of your work. These are your references. References should include everything you need to identify the item, and should be in a consistent format. Your reference list can also include items you have read but not referred to directly in your text.

Electronic sources should also be cited consistently and systematically. With e.g. web pages, e-journals, you need to say when you last accessed them. This is because electronic sources are updated frequently, so saying when you accessed them is like giving the edition of a book.

There are hundreds of different citation (referencing) styles from which to choose when you are citing the sources of your research material.

Remember these are intended only as a guide and you should always use the referencing style your lecturer recommends. Once you have selected a referencing style you must follow the same style consistently.

You can use free reference managers like Mendeley and Zotero to keep track of your references. They can provide help with collecting refrences, citing sources and automatically generating bibliographies of used references.

The most common citation styles:

  • APA Style (author-date) - mainly for use in psychology, but has also been adopted by other disciplines
    APA Referencing: Library Guides, Victoria University (Melbourne)
    APA Citing and Referencing, Monash University

    Article with page numbers (7th edition):
    Muhammad, N., Toming, G., Tuhtan, J. A., Musall, M., & Kruusmaa, M. (2016). Underwater map-based localization using flow features. Autonomous Robots, 41(2), 417–436. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10514-016-9558-0

    Article with article number (7th edition):
    Kim, U. L., Boussonnière, A., Castanet, A.-S. (2022). Intramolecular Anti-Carbolithiation of Alkynes: Stereo-Directing Effect of Lithium-Coordinating Substituents. European Journal of Organic Chemistry, 2022(2), Article e202101409. https://doi.org/10.1002/ejoc.202101409

  • IEEE Style (numeric) - widely used in electrical, electronic and computing publications
    IEEE Referencing: Library Guides, Victoria University (Melbourne)
    IEEE Referencing and Citing, Monash University

    Article with page numbers:
    [1] N. Muhammad, G. Toming, J. A. Tuhtan, M. Musall, and M. Kruusmaa, “Underwater map-based localization using flow features,” Auton. Robots, vol. 41, no. 2, pp. 417–436, Feb. 2016, doi: 10.1007/s10514-016-9558-0.

    Article with an article number:
    [2] U. L. Kim, A. Boussonnière, A.-S. Castanet, “Intramolecular Anti-Carbolithiation of Alkynes: Stereo-Directing Effect of Lithium-Coordinating Substituents,” Eur. J. Org. Chem, vol. 2022, no. 2, Jan. 2022, Art. No. e202101409, doi: 10.1002/ejoc.202101409.

More styles: