How to Cite Your Sources

CSE stands for Council of Science Editors, and it indicates a specific style to be used when citing information and organizing a research paper. The CSE documentation style is used in the sciences, including Biology, Ecology, Zoology, and Medicine. 

There are three documentation systems for CSE style:

• Citation-sequence system
• Citation-name system
• Name-year system

General Rules for CSE Style

• The organization of the reference list is determined by which documentation system you are using. 
  • citation-sequence - list the citation in the numerical order that it appears in the text. 
  • citation-name system - first alphabetize all the citations by authors’ last names, then number them in the text by the order they appear in the list of references.
  • name-year - the citations are alphabetized by authors’ last names.  
• All lines are flush with the left margin, no hanging indentations are used. 
• Authors’ last names are listed first, then the first and middle initial (if given). No commas are used in between the last name and first initial. No periods are used in between initials. 
• Use all authors’ names if a work has up to ten authors listed. For a work with more than ten authors, list the first ten names followed by a comma and “et al.”
• Titles of books and articles are not italicized, “placed within quotation marks”, or underlined. Only the first word of the title is capitalized, after that only proper names in the title are the only words to be capitalized.
• Journal titles that consist of more than one word are abbreviated. All the words in the abbreviated title are capitalized. 
• Do not end the citation with a period if you include the URL.