MRef: For Standard References with Links

MRef, the MR Database tool for creating standard references with links, makes it easy to add links to MathSciNet in your bibliographic references, while at the same time verifying their accuracy and standardizing their form. Please see A Vision for Linking for more on the Society's commitment to enriching the field of mathematics by providing connections to original journal article literature.

MRef can be used whenever a reference can be copied and pasted as text. For example, the reference might be copied as text from a Web page, from a PDF document, or from a file presented in a TeX/AMS-TeX/LaTeX application.

Use MRef to add a link to MathSciNet to an existing reference. Or use it to produce the complete text of a reference in the style of the MR Database.

Try MRef with the following example.

• Click on the following link: MRef. The MRef page will be displayed in a new browser window..
• Return to this window, highlight the reference above, and copy it (Edit-Copy on your browser menu).
• Return to the MRef window and paste (Edit-paste on your browser menu) into the Input box on the popup window.
• Click "Search".

The MRef window should now look something like this:

In this example, the full reference in MR style was returned, together with a link to MathSciNet, which can be copied and pasted. Notice also that the paging error in the original reference was corrected.

Now that the MRef window is available, you can paste or type anything in the input box of the popup window. Simply click the "Search" button after you have pasted or typed. The "Clear" button will empty the input box.

If MRef cannot make a match to the input bibliographic data, the message "No Unique Match Found" is displayed. This is probably because either more bibliographic information is needed to remove ambiguities or the item is not in the MR Database.

There are five formats available:

• MathSciNet format, seen in the example above. This is how the bibliographic information would appear in MathSciNet.
• Link. This gives the "raw" HTML code for just the link to MathSciNet, for pasting into an HTML source document.
• BibTeX.
• AMSRefs.
• TeX. This gives TeX coding that could be directly inserted into a reference list, for those who do not use BiBTeX or AMSRefs.

Note: BibTeX, AMSRefs, and TeX do not include links.

Save MRef to your bookmarks or favorites so that it will be always available.

MRef as a bookmarklet MRef can also be used as a bookmarklet. In its bookmarklet form, the text of a reference can be transferred "automatically" from a Web page into the MRef input box with one mouse click. Click for more information.

MRef joins a variety of other linking and reference tools provided by the AMS.