CSE Citation Generator

Enter your source details and get a correctly formatted CSE 8th-edition reference, plus the matching name–year in-text citation, in seconds. Built for the lab reports, research papers and dissertations in biology, ecology and the life sciences that follow the CSE style — with a live preview you can copy straight into your reference list. CSE defines three documentation systems; this generator implements the name–year system, in which the year sits directly after the authors and the reference list is alphabetical.

Used in: Biology, zoology, botany, genetics, ecology and the natural and life sciences. CSE (formerly CBE) is the standard scientific style across much of North American science publishing and is widely required in university science coursework.

CSE · 8th edition (name–year)Name–year

The default CSE system: the year follows the author and the reference list is alphabetical, with (Surname Year) in-text.

Enter your source

Auto-cite from a DOI, ISBN or PubMed ID

Or fill the form yourself below. A bare web address can’t be looked up in the browser — paste its DOI instead.

Source type

A peer-reviewed article in an academic journal.

Author

Digital Object Identifier, if the source has one.

Year published

Add an author or a title and your formatted CSE citation appears here instantly.

In your text

Name–year in parentheses with no comma: (Surname Year), e.g. (Tulving and Thomson 1973). Two authors are joined with “and”; three or more collapse to the first author + “et al.”, e.g. (Tulving et al. 1973).

In your reference list

Alphabetical by the first author’s surname. Names are inverted with closed-up initials and no periods (“Tulving E, Thomson DM”), the year follows the authors, and nothing is italicised. Article and book titles take sentence case; journal names take headline case.

CSE tips
  • Nothing is italicised in CSE — neither book nor journal titles.
  • Invert author names and close up the initials with no periods: “Smith JA”, not “Smith, J. A.”.
  • The year comes immediately after the author element, e.g. “Tulving E, Thomson DM. 1973.”.
  • Condense journal facts tightly as Volume(Issue):Pages — “80(5):352-373.” — with a plain hyphen in the page range.
  • Mark online sources with “[Internet]” and add an “[accessed Year Mon Day]” phrase before the URL.

Your reference list is empty. Build a citation above and choose “Add to list” to collect your sources here, correctly ordered and ready to copy or export.

The CSE difference

CSE is three styles in one — pick the right system

Unlike every other style here, CSE (Scientific Style and Format, 8th edition) defines three interchangeable documentation systems off the same reference content. What changes is the in-text marker and the order of the reference list. This generator builds the name–year system; the panels below show how the other two diverge so you can match your department's instruction.

Same reference text in all threeDifferent in-text markerDifferent list order
One reference, three systems

The reference-list entry itself is identical in all three systems. Only how you point to it from the body of your text — and where it sits in the list — changes:

Tulving E, Thomson DM. 1973. Encoding specificity and retrieval processes in episodic memory. Psychological Review. 80(5):352-373.
System 1

Name–Year

Built here
In-text marker
(Tulving and Thomson 1973)

Surname(s) + year, no comma.

List order

Alphabetical by first author

The list is sorted by author surname, exactly like APA or Harvard.

Common in

Ecology, evolution, botany, organismal and field biology

System 2

Citation–Sequence

Numbered
In-text marker
Cells divide rapidly.¹

Superscript number, assigned in order of first appearance.

List order

Numbered in order of first mention

Reference 1 is whatever you cited first — the list is not alphabetical.

Common in

Cell and molecular biology, biochemistry, much of laboratory science

System 3

Citation–Name

Numbered
In-text marker
Cells divide rapidly.³

Superscript number drawn from the finished, alphabetised list.

List order

Alphabetical first, then numbered

You alphabetise the list, number it, then cite those fixed numbers in the text.

Common in

Genetics and journals that want a numbered yet stable reference order

Which one do I use?
Check your assignment brief or target journal first — the choice is theirs, not yours. If you are simply told “use CSE” with no system named, the name–year system this generator produces is the safe, author-readable default and is widely accepted across the life sciences.
Reference anatomy

Inside a name–year reference

Every element of a CSE journal article reference, in the exact order it appears, with the rule that governs each segment. Read it left to right — the parts below reconstruct the full entry.

Journal article— assembled in full

Tulving E, Thomson DM. 1973. Encoding specificity and retrieval processes in episodic memory. Psychological Review. 80(5):352-373.

  1. 1
    Author(s)Tulving E, Thomson DM.

    Surname first, then closed-up initials with no periods or spaces (“Tulving E”). Authors are comma-separated and the element ends with a full stop.

  2. 2
    Year1973.

    The publication year follows the authors immediately, closed by a full stop — this is what makes it the name–year system.

  3. 3
    Article titleEncoding specificity and retrieval processes in episodic memory.

    Sentence case — only the first word, the first word after a colon, and proper nouns are capitalised. Never italicised.

  4. 4
    Journal namePsychological Review.

    Headline (title) case, not italicised, and followed by a full stop before the journal facts.

  5. 5
    Volume(Issue):Pages80(5):352-373.

    Condensed with no spaces: volume, issue in parentheses, a colon, then the full page range with a plain hyphen.

Source-type templates

A template for every source you'll cite

Match your source to a row, drop your details into the pattern, and check it against the worked example. Each template follows the CSE name–year layout: authors, year, then the source facts — never italicised.

Journal article

Template
Author(s). Year. Article title. Journal Name. Volume(Issue):pages.
Example
Tulving E, Thomson DM. 1973. Encoding specificity and retrieval processes in episodic memory. Psychological Review. 80(5):352-373.

Book

Template
Author(s). Year. Book title. Edition. Place: Publisher.
Example
Kuhn TS. 1996. The structure of scientific revolutions. 3rd ed. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

Book chapter

Template
Author(s). Year. Chapter title. In: Editor(s), editor. Book title. Place: Publisher. p. pages.
Example
McGann JJ. 1997. The rationale of hypertext. In: Greetham DC, editor. Electronic text: Investigations in method and theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 19-46.

Website

Template
Author(s). Year. Page title [Internet]. Publisher; [accessed Year Mon Day]. URL
Example
Cherry K. 2022. How human memory works [Internet]. Verywell Mind; [accessed 2024 Jan 15]. https://www.verywellmind.com/how-memory-works-2795000

Newspaper article

Template
Author(s). Year. Article title. Newspaper Name (Year Mon Day). URL
Example
Carrington D. 2021. World leaders strike landmark climate deal at COP26. The Guardian (2021 Nov 13). https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/nov/13/cop26-climate-deal

Online video

Template
Author/Uploader. Year. Title [video]. Platform; URL
Example
Veritasium. 2020. The science of thermodynamics [video]. YouTube; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xb-zVtJf9Hk

Conference paper

Template
Author(s). Year. Paper title. In: Proceedings Name; Location. Place: Publisher. p. pages.
Example
Vaswani A, Shazeer N. 2017. Attention is all you need. In: Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems; Long Beach, CA. Long Beach, CA: Curran Associates. p. 5998-6008.

Thesis / dissertation

Template
Author. Year. Title [thesis type]. Institution. URL
Example
Doe JA. 2019. Essays on monetary policy and inflation expectations [Doctoral dissertation]. University of Oxford. https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:example

Report

Template
Author/Organisation. Year. Report title. Place: Publisher. No. xx. URL
Example
World Health Organization. 2023. World health statistics 2023: Monitoring health for the SDGs. Geneva, Switzerland: World Health Organization. No. 24. https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/9789240074323
Get it right

The mistakes CSE markers notice

Most lost marks come from importing habits from APA or MLA — ampersands, italics, title-case headings and comma'd in-text citations. Each pair below shows the slip and its CSE-correct fix.

Wrong
Tulving, E., & Thomson, D. M. 1973.
Right
Tulving E, Thomson DM. 1973.

CSE closes up initials with no periods, no internal space and no ampersand — “Thomson DM”, authors joined only by commas.

Wrong
Encoding Specificity and Retrieval Processes in Episodic Memory.
Right
Encoding specificity and retrieval processes in episodic memory.

Article, chapter and book titles take sentence case in CSE, not title case.

Wrong
Psychological Review, 80(5), 352–373.
Right
Psychological Review. 80(5):352-373.

CSE separates the journal name with a full stop and condenses the facts tightly — Volume(Issue):pages with a plain hyphen, no spaces and no italics.

Wrong
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.
Right
The structure of scientific revolutions.

Book titles are never italicised in CSE and use sentence case, so only the first word and proper nouns are capitalised.

Wrong
How human memory works. Verywell Mind. Retrieved from https://…
Right
How human memory works [Internet]. Verywell Mind; [accessed 2024 Jan 15]. https://…

Online sources need the “[Internet]” media designator and an “[accessed Year Mon Day]” phrase; CSE does not use “Retrieved from”.

Wrong
(Tulving and Thomson, 1973)
Right
(Tulving and Thomson 1973)

The name–year in-text citation has no comma between the surname(s) and the year.

A finished list

A sample CSE reference list

The same four references, laid out the two ways you'll most often be asked for. On the left, the name–year list (alphabetical) that this generator produces; on the right, how the citation–sequence system would number the very same sources by order of first mention.

Name–year

Alphabetical · built by this tool

  • Carrington D. 2021. World leaders strike landmark climate deal at COP26. The Guardian (2021 Nov 13). https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/nov/13/cop26-climate-deal
  • Cherry K. 2022. How human memory works [Internet]. Verywell Mind; [accessed 2024 Jan 15]. https://www.verywellmind.com/how-memory-works-2795000
  • Kuhn TS. 1996. The structure of scientific revolutions. 3rd ed. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
  • Tulving E, Thomson DM. 1973. Encoding specificity and retrieval processes in episodic memory. Psychological Review. 80(5):352-373.

Citation–sequence

Numbered · order of first mention

  1. 1.Carrington D. 2021. World leaders strike landmark climate deal at COP26. The Guardian (2021 Nov 13). https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/nov/13/cop26-climate-deal
  2. 2.Cherry K. 2022. How human memory works [Internet]. Verywell Mind; [accessed 2024 Jan 15]. https://www.verywellmind.com/how-memory-works-2795000
  3. 3.Kuhn TS. 1996. The structure of scientific revolutions. 3rd ed. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
  4. 4.Tulving E, Thomson DM. 1973. Encoding specificity and retrieval processes in episodic memory. Psychological Review. 80(5):352-373.
Heading your list
CSE name–year lists are headed References or Cited References. Note that the two columns above are not in the same row order — that is the whole point of CSE’s systems. The reference text is byte-for-byte identical; only the sort key and the in-text marker differ.

This generator uses CSE 8th edition (Scientific Style and Format, 2014, the manual of the Council of Science Editors — formerly the Council of Biology Editors) and implements its name–year documentation system. The defining features are closed-up author initials with no periods, the year sitting directly after the authors, sentence-cased titles, headline-cased journal names, tightly condensed journal facts (Volume(Issue):pages), and the complete absence of italics. CSE also defines a citation–sequence and a citation–name system, which use the same reference content but a numbered in-text marker and a differently ordered list.

CSE Citation Generator — questions

Which CSE system does this generator use?+

CSE 8th edition (Scientific Style and Format, 2014) defines three documentation systems: name–year, citation–sequence and citation–name. This generator produces the name–year system, where the publication year follows the author names and the reference list is ordered alphabetically. If your course requires the numbered citation–sequence or citation–name system, the reference content is the same but the in-text marker is a superscript number and the list is ordered differently.

How do I format author names in CSE?+

Invert each name to surname-first and reduce the given names to closed-up initials with no periods — “Tulving E”, “Thomson DM”. Names are separated by commas, and the year follows immediately: “Tulving E, Thomson DM. 1973.” In the name–year system you list every author; only very long author lists are shortened with “et al.”

When do I use “et al.” in a CSE in-text citation?+

The in-text citation is the surname (or surnames) and the year with no comma: (Tulving 1973). With two authors, join them with “and”: (Tulving and Thomson 1973). With three or more authors, give the first surname followed by “et al.”: (Tulving et al. 1973). The full author list still appears in the reference list.

Are book or journal titles italicised in CSE?+

No. CSE does not italicise any element of a reference — neither book titles, journal names, nor website titles. Article, chapter, book, report and thesis titles take sentence case (only the first word, the first word after a colon, and proper nouns are capitalised), while journal and newspaper names take headline (title) case.

How are journal volume, issue and pages written in CSE?+

CSE condenses them tightly with no spaces: the volume, the issue in parentheses, a colon, then the page range — “80(5):352-373.” Give the full page range with a plain hyphen. If there is no issue number, write the volume followed directly by the colon and pages, e.g. “80:352-373.”

Does CSE abbreviate journal names?+

CSE traditionally abbreviates journal titles following standard scientific abbreviation rules (for example, “Journal of Experimental Biology” becomes “J Exp Biol”). This generator does not include an abbreviation database, so it outputs the full journal name exactly as you type it. If your assignment requires the standard abbreviation, type the abbreviated form into the journal field; the rest of the reference is formatted for you.

How do I cite an online source in CSE?+

Add the media designator “[Internet]” after the title, name the publishing site, then give an access date in the form “[accessed 2024 Jan 15]”, and end with the URL — for example, “… [Internet]. Verywell Mind; [accessed 2024 Jan 15]. https://…”. The access date matters for web pages because their content can change after you read them.

How do I cite a source with no author in CSE?+

Move the title into the author position and order the reference list alphabetically by the first significant word of that title. In the text, use a short form of the title with the year — for instance ([Anonymous] 2023) or a shortened title plus year — following the convention your department specifies.

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