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CSE Style Guide

Citation style guilde i based on the Scientifitc Style and Format: The CSE Manual for Authors, Editors and Publishers, 8th edition.

About CSE Citation Styles

This guide contains some examples of common citation formats in CSE Style (Council of Science Editors, formerly called the CBE Council of Biology Editors).  

Note: the CSE style describes three options for references; use the style which is commonly used in your discipline:

  • Citation-Sequence (C-S) system which uses numbers within the text to refer to the end references which are listed in the order they are referred to in the text. Subsequent citations to the same document use the same number as its initial citation:
     
    In text example: Modern scientific nomenclature really began with Linnaeus in botany1, but other disciplines2,3 were not many years behind in developing various systems4-7 for nomenclature and symbolization
     
  • Citation-Name (C-N) system which uses numbers within the text to refer to the end references which are listed alphabetically by author and then by title.:

    In text example: Modern scientific nomenclature really began with Linnaeus in botany4, but other discipline1,5 were not many years behind in developing various systems2-3,6,10 for nomenclature and symbolization
     
  • Name-Year (N-Y) system which uses the surname of the author and the year of publication to refer to the end references which are then listed alphabetically by author and then by year:
     
    In text example: By contrast, the several antisera that have been raised against Sp1, a defined RNA polymerase II transcription factor (Kadonaga 1986), stain exclusively the nucleus . . .

General Style Guidelines

This guide outlines how to cite some of the more common information sources in the Council of Science Editor’s (CSE) Style Name-Year system.

Name-Year (N-Y) System in CSE

Name-Year (N-Y) system: The author of the source and date of publication are placed in parentheses in the text, e.g., (Smith 2011). References are listed alphabetically in the Reference List. This system is very similar to APA style.

CSE style does not specify guidelines for the physical layout of student research papers; most instructors will want the layout of your paper to be consistent with common scientific practice. 

NOTE: instructor requirements may differ, always ask your own instructor whether there are additional requirements for your assignment.