Council of Science Editors (CSE) Citation Style Guide

The Council of Science Editors, (CSE) citation style is an authoritative set of rules and best practices for scientific writing and publishing. Formerly known as the Council of Biology editors (CBE) style, it is now used widely across the life sciences, physical sciences, and environmental sciences.

For a quick overview of this style, please visit the CSE Style Citation Quick Guide.

The CSE Manual is currently in its 9th edition (2024) and can be found in the reference collection on the 1st floor of Perkins Library.

The CSE Manual uses three different systems for referring to references:

1. Citation–Sequence (C–S)

2. Citation–Name (C–N)

3. Name–Year (N–Y)

The first two systems, citation–sequence and citation–name, are nearly identical except for how they order citations in the bibliography. They both use numbers within the text to refer to the citations in the bibliography. 

The third system, name–year, uses in-text citations consisting of author last name(s) and year of publication. The citations in the bibliography are listed alphabetically as opposed to numbered. This system is most similar to the Chicago Manual Style.

Important notes about the reference list:

• Journal titles are abbreviated but no periods are used. Standardized journal abbreviations can be found using the List of Title Word Abbreviations (LTWA) from ISSN.org. (e.g., Adv Biol)
• Author initials, without periods, are used instead of first or middle names in the bibliography (e.g., Schrute D).
• Instead of using an ampersand (&) or "and", you will list the last author name after a comma in the bibliography (e.g., Schrute D, Halpert J, Scott M).
• Citations in the bibliography are formatted with hanging indents.