Council of Science Editors (CSE) Citation Style Guide

In the name–year system, the references at the end of your work (i.e., your bibliography or works cited) are listed unnumbered, alphabetically, and by publication year. Unlike the other two systems, you will place the publication year directly after the author name(s). Within your text, you will use author last name(s) and publication year within parentheses to cite the reference.

🙂 Advantages of the name–year system:

• Easy to add or remove references from your work without having to worry about renumbering them.
• Readers of your work are more likely to recognize an in-text citation by the author's last name as opposed to a number.
• By providing the publication year in the in-text citation, this will provide some context to your readers.
• Easy to locate references in the bibliography since they're arranged alphabetically.

☹️ Disadvantages of the name–year system:

• Numerous rules that must be followed to properly format in-text citations.
• Long in-text citations can interrupt the flow of your text.

In-text citation

The name–year system uses the last names of up to 2 authors and the year of publication of the document, enclosed in parentheses. For works with 2 authors, separate the names by "and." If a work has 3 or more authors, list the first author name followed by "et al."

Many recent research studies have addressed the molecular mechanism underlying bacterial behavior (Lyon et al. 2021).

Bibliography

The name–year system lists references unnumbered and alphabetically.

Lyon P, Keijzer F, Arendt D, et al. 2021. Reframing cognition: Getting down to biological basics. R Soc. 376(1820):20190750. https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2019.0750

Example taken from: Nesin SM, Chandrankunnel M. 2025. The need for a new perspective on decision-making in bacteria. Commun. Integr. Biol. 18(1):2463926. https://doi.org/10.1080/19420889.2025.2463926