Generate references in CSE style — the name-year format of Scientific Style and Format, the Council of Science Editors manual used across biology and the life sciences — from a DOI, PubMed ID, PMCID, ISBN, arXiv ID, ISSN, ADS bibcode, or paper URL. Author-year ordering, abbreviated journal titles, and the first-ten-then-et-al. author rule, resolved from the publisher’s own record.
CSE name-year format · DOI, PMID, PMCID & ISBN input · Free, no signup
One identifier per line. We’ll resolve it and return a CSE-style reference. Nothing is stored.
0 / 2,000 characters
Resolving an identifier confirms the paper exists - it does not confirm the citations in your bibliography point to the right papers. The dominant AI-fabrication pattern is a real, resolvable DOI paired with an invented title. Audit your whole reference list for fabricated citations before you submit.
Each resolved identifier produces one reference in CSE name-year format. The year sits directly after the authors, and the numeric block runs volume, issue in parentheses, colon, page range. This paper has 34 authors, so the output shows the CSE cutoff: the first ten, then et al.
Input
Output
Jumper J, Evans R, Pritzel A, Green T, Figurnov M, Ronneberger O, Tunyasuvunakool K, Bates R, Žídek A, Potapenko A, et al. 2021. Highly accurate protein structure prediction with AlphaFold. Nature. 596(7873):583–589. doi:10.1038/s41586-021-03819-2.
Note the CSE conventions: initials without periods, the year in the second position, and the lowercase doi:prefix at the end. Author names and title casing come from the publisher’s registered record.
CSE style is the citation format of the Council of Science Editors, defined in Scientific Style and Format: The CSE Manual for Authors, Editors, and Publishers (8th edition, 2014). It grew out of the earlier CBE (Council of Biology Editors) style and is the standard across biology, ecology, and the wider life sciences, and in many US university biology programs.
CSE defines three citation systems: citation-sequence, citation-name, and name-year. This generator produces the name-yearform — in-text citations are author-year, such as (Jumper et al. 2021), and the reference list is ordered alphabetically by first author. Journal titles are abbreviated as PubMed abbreviates them, and DOIs are appended with a lowercase doi: prefix. For the numbered medical styles, see the Vancouver Citation Generator and the AMA Citation Generator; to see CSE next to any other style for the same paper, use the Citation Style Comparator.
Reading the example above left to right, a CSE journal reference is built from these parts:
| Part | Example | Convention |
|---|---|---|
| Authors | Jumper J, Evans R, Pritzel A, …, Potapenko A, et al. | Surname + initials, no periods inside initials; first ten listed, then et al. when eleven or more |
| Year | 2021 | Name-year system: the year follows the authors directly |
| Article title | Highly accurate protein structure prediction with AlphaFold | As the publisher registered it, followed by a period |
| Journal | Nature | Registry abbreviation; single-word titles stay unabbreviated |
| Volume(Issue):Pages | 596(7873):583–589 | Volume, issue in parentheses, colon, en-dash page range |
| DOI | doi:10.1038/s41586-021-03819-2 | Lowercase doi: prefix, closing period |
Books and book chapters work too: enter an ISBN and the reference comes back as authors, year, title, publisher — chapters add the In: block and page range.
.bib file with our DOI to BibTeX converter and pair it with the author-year bibliography style your journal’s template specifies.This page uses the public API’s builtin CSE formatter. Send POST /api/format with style: "cse" and one or more identifiers in text; batch input returns one reference per line. The builtins vancouver, ama, ieee, and apa work the same way, and 10,000+ further styles are available by CSL id. See the API documentation.
CSE style is the reference format of the Council of Science Editors, defined in Scientific Style and Format: The CSE Manual for Authors, Editors, and Publishers (8th edition, 2014). It is the standard style across biology, ecology, and the wider life sciences, and the default in many US university biology programs.
CSE defines three systems: citation-sequence (numbered in citation order), citation-name (numbered alphabetically), and name-year. This generator produces name-year references — the year follows the authors directly, and in-text citations look like (Jumper et al. 2021). In a name-year reference list, entries are ordered alphabetically by first author.
Authors come first as surname plus initials with no punctuation inside the initials, then the year, the article title, the journal title, then volume(issue):pages, and finally the DOI with a lowercase doi: prefix — for example Nature. 596(7873):583–589. doi:10.1038/s41586-021-03819-2.
The generator follows the CSE Manual (8th edition) rule: when a paper has ten or fewer authors, every author is listed; when it has eleven or more, the first ten are listed followed by et al. This is the most generous cutoff of the numbered science styles — AMA lists three and Vancouver six before et al.
Yes. It uses the abbreviated journal title carried on the registry record, the same ISO/NLM-style abbreviations PubMed uses — single-word titles such as Nature stay unabbreviated. When a journal has no abbreviation on file, the full journal title is used instead.
Yes. Paste a PMID or PMCID and the tool resolves it via PubMed, then formats the record in CSE name-year style. DOIs, ISBNs, arXiv IDs, ISSNs, and ADS bibcodes work the same way — enter one identifier per line to build a whole reference list at once.
Compare CSE output against other styles side by side with the Citation Style Comparator, or export the same references to a reference manager format.
This page is a front end for the public Scholar Sidekick API — the same CSE formatting runs over plain HTTP, so you can call it from a script, an AI agent, or your reference manager. Light use needs no key at all. A free account issues an ssk_ key that raises your rate limit.