The Citation Style Language (CSL) is an open
XML
Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a markup language and file format for storing, transmitting, and reconstructing arbitrary data. It defines a set of rules for encoding documents in a format that is both human-readable and machine-readable. ...
-based language to describe the formatting of
citation
A citation is a reference to a source. More precisely, a citation is an abbreviated alphanumeric expression embedded in the body of an intellectual work that denotes an entry in the bibliographic references section of the work for the purpose of ...
s and
bibliographies
Bibliography (from and ), as a discipline, is traditionally the academic study of books as physical, cultural objects; in this sense, it is also known as bibliology (from ). English author and bibliographer John Carter describes ''bibliography ...
.
Reference management programs using CSL include
Zotero
Zotero () is a free and open-source reference management software to manage bibliographic data and related research materials, such as PDF files. Features include web browser integration, online syncing, generation of in-text citations, footnot ...
,
Mendeley and
Papers
Paper is a thin, flat material produced by the compression of fibres.
Paper(s) or The Paper may also refer to:
Publishing and academia
* Newspaper, a periodical publication
* ''Paper'' (magazine), an American monthly fashion and culture magazin ...
. The
Pandoc lightweight document conversion system also supports citations in CSL,
YAML
YAML ( and ) (''see '') is a human-readable data-serialization language. It is commonly used for configuration files and in applications where data is being stored or transmitted. YAML targets many of the same communications applications as Ext ...
, and
JSON
JSON (JavaScript Object Notation, pronounced ; also ) is an open standard file format and data interchange format that uses human-readable text to store and transmit data objects consisting of attribute–value pairs and arrays (or other s ...
formats and can render these using any of the CSL styles listed in the Zotero Style Repository.
[
]
History
CSL was created by Bruce D'Arcus for use with
OpenOffice.org, and an
XSLT
XSLT (Extensible Stylesheet Language Transformations) is a language originally designed for transforming XML documents into other XML documents, or other formats such as HTML for web pages, plain text or XSL Formatting Objects, which may subse ...
-based "
CiteProc" CSL processor. CSL was further developed in collaboration with
Zotero
Zotero () is a free and open-source reference management software to manage bibliographic data and related research materials, such as PDF files. Features include web browser integration, online syncing, generation of in-text citations, footnot ...
developer Simon Kornblith. Since 2008, the core development team consists of D'Arcus, Frank Bennett and Rintze Zelle.
The releases of CSL are 0.8 (March 21, 2009), 0.8.1 (February 1, 2010), 1.0 (March 22, 2010), and 1.0.1 (September 3, 2012). CSL 1.0 was a backward-incompatible release, but styles in the 0.8.1 format can be automatically updated to the CSL 1.0 format.
On its release in 2006,
Zotero
Zotero () is a free and open-source reference management software to manage bibliographic data and related research materials, such as PDF files. Features include web browser integration, online syncing, generation of in-text citations, footnot ...
became the first application to adopt CSL. In 2008
Mendeley was released with CSL support, and in 2011,
Papers
Paper is a thin, flat material produced by the compression of fibres.
Paper(s) or The Paper may also refer to:
Publishing and academia
* Newspaper, a periodical publication
* ''Paper'' (magazine), an American monthly fashion and culture magazin ...
and
Qiqqa gained support for CSL-based citation formatting.
Software support
*
Zotero
Zotero () is a free and open-source reference management software to manage bibliographic data and related research materials, such as PDF files. Features include web browser integration, online syncing, generation of in-text citations, footnot ...
,
Mendeley,
Papers
Paper is a thin, flat material produced by the compression of fibres.
Paper(s) or The Paper may also refer to:
Publishing and academia
* Newspaper, a periodical publication
* ''Paper'' (magazine), an American monthly fashion and culture magazin ...
, and
Qiqqa all support CSL 1.0 (
Zotero
Zotero () is a free and open-source reference management software to manage bibliographic data and related research materials, such as PDF files. Features include web browser integration, online syncing, generation of in-text citations, footnot ...
also supports CSL 0.8.1 styles, which are internally updated to CSL 1.0).
*
Zotero
Zotero () is a free and open-source reference management software to manage bibliographic data and related research materials, such as PDF files. Features include web browser integration, online syncing, generation of in-text citations, footnot ...
,
Mendeley, and
Qiqqa rely on the ''citeproc-js'' JavaScript CSL processor.
*
Zotero
Zotero () is a free and open-source reference management software to manage bibliographic data and related research materials, such as PDF files. Features include web browser integration, online syncing, generation of in-text citations, footnot ...
,
Mendeley, and
Qiqqa provide a built-in CSL editor to help create and modify CSL styles.
Styles
The CSL project maintains a CSL 1.0 style repository, which contains over 9000 styles (more than 1700 unique styles).
References
External links
Project home of the Citation Style Language*
Zotero's CSL documentationWYSIWYG CSL 1.0 style editor(in development, by
Mendeley)
Metadata
Bibliography file formats
Library 2.0
Reference
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