CSE has three distinct systems: name-year; citation-sequence; citation-name

 

References list

With the exception of the placement of the date, the entries in the References list in CSE are uniform.

General Rules

• Author Names: are listed as last name and first initial (no comma after last name); three or more authors should be the first author's last name followed by et al: (Smith et al. 2007
• Book Titles: are in sentence case (only the first word of the title (and any proper noun) is capitalized), no underlining or italics.
• Article Titles: are in sentence case (only the first word of the title (and any proper noun) is capitalized), no quotation marks.
• Journal Titles: are in Title Case (capitalize all words except and), no underlining or italics.
• Page Numbers in Book Entries: the number of pages in the book is listed in brackets.
• Page Numbers in Web Entries: the number or approximate number of pages, screens, paragraphs, lines, or bytes is listed in brackets.

Dates

The placement of dates in the references list depends on the citation system.

• Name-year system: Place the date immediately after the author’s name. Follow the date with a period.
• Citation-sequence and Citation-name systems: For books, place the date after the publisher’s name; for articles, place the date after the journal name.

Examples

Article in a print journal:  

Cox J, Engstrom RT. 2001. Influence of the spatial pattern of conserved lands on the persistence of a large population of red-cockaded woodpeckers. Biol Conserv. 100(1): 137-150.
 

Article in an online journal:  

Isaacs FJ, Blake WJ, Collins JJ. Signal processing in single cells. Science [Internet]. 2005 Mar 25 [cited 2009 Jun 17];307(5717): 1886-1888. Available from: http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/307/5717/1886.
 

Article or chapter in an edited volume: 

Kuret JA, Murad F. 1990. Adenohypophyseal hormones and related substances. In: Gilman AG, Rall TW, Nies AS, Taylor P, editors. The pharmacological basis of therapeutics. 8th ed. New York: Pergamon. p 1334−60.
 

Article with a corporate or organizational author:  

[ICMJE] International Committee of Medical Journal Editors. 2004. Clinical trial registration: a statement from the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors. JAMA. 292(11):1363-1364.
 

Article from a Website:

National Institute on Drug Abuse (US). Inhalant abuse [Internet]. Research Report Series. Bethesda (MD): National Institutes of Health (US); 2005 Mar [cited 2005 Jun 23]; [about 13 screens]. NIH Pub. No.: 00-3818. Available from: http://www.drugabuse.gov/ResearchReports/Inhalants/Inhalants.html.
 

Book:

Thewissen JGM. 2015. The walking whales: from land to water in eight million years. Oakland (CA): University of California Press.
 

Edited Book: 

Chakravarti A, editor. 2014. Human variation: A genetic perspective on diversity, race, and medicine. Cold Spring Harbor (NY): Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press.
 

Chapter in a Book:

Honegger R.2008. Morphogenesis. In: Nash TH, editor. Lichen biology. 2nd ed. New York (NY): Cambridge University Press. p. 69-93.

 

In-Text Citations

In-text-citations are formatted differently in each citation system.

Name-year system

Either identify Author in a signal phrase and include the date of the citation in parentheses OR include both author name and date in the parentheses. When multiple references are listed in one parenthetical citation, arrange chronologically starting with the earliest date.

In the thorough study by Browne, it was determined that this method was not feasible (2001).

Future studies confirmed this finding (Wagner 2002; Williams and Hunt 2003).

Citation-sequence system

Each in-text citation is followed by a superscript number based on where the source first appears in the text. For example, if the first reference in a citation-sequence system paper were to an article by Browne, the reference would be labeled this way:

In the thorough study by Browne¹, it was determined that this method was not feasible.

After that, each time the Browne article is cited, it should be labeled with a superscript 1. Subsequent sources would be labeled 2, 3, 4, etc.

Citation-name system

Each in-text citation is followed by a superscript number based on where the source appears in the alphabetical references list. For example, in a citation-name system paper relying on sources by Vang, by Browne, and by Abdi, those three sources would be arranged in the reference list alphabetically by author’s last name, and each source would have its own corresponding number assigned in that list: 1. Abdi; 2. Browne; 3. Vang.

Even in a case where the first reference in that paper is to an article by Browne, the in-text citation would be labeled with a superscript 2 because Browne is the second entry in the alphabetical reference list:

In the thorough study by Browne², it was determined that this method was not feasible.

Thereafter, each time the Browne article is cited, it should be labeled with a superscript 2. Other sources would always be labeled according to their order in the references list (i.e., Abdi¹, Vang³).