Basic CSE rules to remember:
- CSE contains three formats: Citation-sequence, citation-name, and name-year.
- In citation-sequence, the reference list should be numbered in the order in which the citations first appear in the article; subsequent citations to the same source should use the original number.
- In citation-name, the reference list is numbered and listed in alphabetical order by the primary author’s last name.
- Name-year requires you to list, but not number, your sources alphabetically in the reference list.
- In citation-sequence and citation-name, citation numbers should appear in superscript, and before punctuation marks (although many journals format the numbers differently).
- In-text citations in name-year include the authors’ names and publication year.
- The reference list should be titled “References” or “Cited References.”
- Only the first letter of a book or article title is capitalized, unless the title contains proper nouns.
- Titles are not italicized, with the exception of species names.
- Journal titles are abbreviated according to the ISO 4 standard. More information on the abbreviations is available here.
- Publication year and volume number are required for all citations; issue number is strongly recommended. Do not use space to separate an article’s date, volume, and page.
