CSE (name–year) references and in-text citations from a DOI, ISBN, URL or title, with the rules explained. Export the list to Word.
Let’s cite!
Paste a DOI, ISBN, PubMed or arXiv ID, a web address, or just a title. Your list is saved in this browser, so you can close the tab and come back to it.
Formatted by citeproc-js © Frank Bennett, unmodified, under the CPAL — citeproc-js implements the Citation Style Language. Styles from the CSL project, CC BY-SA 3.0 (our copies).
Paste a DOI, an ISBN, a link or a title and the tool finds the publisher's own record for it and formats it in CSE (name–year) — the author–date system used in biology, ecology, agriculture and the general sciences. The references entry and the in-text citation come together, and the rules are those of the Scientific Style and Format: The CSE Manual for Authors, Editors, and Publishers, 9th edition (2024), published by the Council of Science Editors. The 9th edition was published in 2024; the 8th (2014) is the one most course guides still quote.
This page presets the name–year system. Switch to CSE (citation–sequence) in the picker if your course numbers its references.
Three steps, about twenty seconds a source.
A DOI, an ISBN, a PubMed or arXiv ID, a web address, or a title. CSE is already selected on this page. The tool works out what you pasted and asks the right catalogue — Crossref, OpenLibrary, PubMed, DataCite or Semantic Scholar — for the record.
Each source gets a card showing what the catalogue held and what the tool changed to fit CSE: a title converted to sentence case, a DOI reduced to its bare form, a page range tidied. Every change can be undone with one click if the record was right as it was.
Copy the list with its formatting into Word or Google Docs, or download a .docx with the numbering and spacing already set. BibTeX, RIS and CSL-JSON exports carry the same data into Zotero, Mendeley, EndNote or LaTeX.
The rules the tool applies, from the Scientific Style and Format: The CSE Manual for Authors, Editors, and Publishers, 9th edition (2024).
Six real sources — two journal articles, a book, a chapter, a web page and a conference paper — formatted by the same engine that runs the generator above. Nothing here was typed by hand, so what you see is what you get.
AI Writing Assistant. AI Writing Assistant; [accessed 2026 Sept 18]. https://www.aiwritingassistant.net/tools.html
In text: (AI Writing Assistant)
The CSE name–year style file published by the Citation Style Language project prints a web page's site name but not its title. That is a gap in the style file, which the tool redistributes unmodified, not a rule of the manual; the CSE (citation–sequence) style in the picker prints the title.
Golder SA, Macy MW. 2011. Diurnal and seasonal mood vary with work, sleep, and daylength across diverse cultures. Science. 333(6051):1878–1881. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1202775
In text, citing page 1880: (Golder and Macy 2011: 1880)
Grice HP. 1975. Logic and conversation. In: Cole P, Morgan JL, editors. Syntax and Semantics, Volume 3: Speech Acts. Academic Press; p 41–58
In text, citing page 45: (Grice 1975: 45)
Kahneman D, Knetsch JL, Thaler RH. 1991. Anomalies: The endowment effect, loss aversion, and status quo bias. Journal of Economic Perspectives. 5(1):193–206. https://doi.org/10.1257/jep.5.1.193
In text: (Kahneman et al. 1991)
Kuhn TS. 2012. The structure of scientific revolutions. 4th ed. University of Chicago Press.
In text, citing page 12: (Kuhn 2012: 12)
Vaswani A et al. 2017. Attention is all you need. In: Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems 30. Curran Associates; p 5998–6008
In text: (Vaswani et al. 2017)
The publishers' records hold 6 of these titles in title case; the tool converted them to sentence case, as CSE requires, and reported each change on its card, where one click keeps the original instead.
Five errors markers see most often, and what the tool does about each.
Name–year, citation–sequence and citation–name are all CSE. A course guide names one; using another is marked as a different style.
CSE writes (Kuhn 2012). The comma is APA's and Harvard's.
Golder SA, not Golder, S. A.
CSE sets article titles plain and in sentence case, like Vancouver.
Name–year puts the year straight after the authors so the citation can be matched; citation–sequence puts it after the journal title.
If your handbook names one of these instead, its page opens the generator with that style selected.
Vancouver is what CSE's citation–sequence system looks like in medicine: numbered in citation order, the same closed-up initials and plain titles. Open the Vancouver page.
APA is the author–date style most biology students have met first; CSE differs in the missing comma, the closed-up initials and the plain titles. Open the APA page.
Yes. Every style, every source type and every export is free, with no account and no daily allowance, because the formatting runs in your browser rather than on our servers. Your list is saved in this browser and never sent to us.
The 9th edition (2024), as the CSL style is titled. The differences from the 8th edition that a reader sees are small; where a course guide quotes the 8th, the entries match.
CSE describes three systems and this page presets name–year: the surname and year with no comma between them, (Kuhn 2012), and a page after a colon: (Kuhn 2012: 12). The tool prints the in-text form under each reference; turn on the in-text switch above the list if it is hidden.
Paste the address and the tool reads the page's title, author, site name and date where the page declares them, then formats it. The CSE form of a web page with an organisation as author and no date is: AI Writing Assistant. AI Writing Assistant; [accessed 2026 Sept 18]. https://www.aiwritingassistant.net/tools.html The CSE name–year style file published by the Citation Style Language project prints a web page's site name but not its title. That is a gap in the style file, which the tool redistributes unmodified, not a rule of the manual; the CSE (citation–sequence) style in the picker prints the title. Check the author and date on the card — pages often leave them out, and the style has a rule for each case.
Yes. Your sources are stored as data, not as formatted text, so choosing another style in the picker re-formats the whole list at once — APA, MLA, Chicago, Harvard, IEEE, Vancouver, or any of the 10,000 Citation Style Language styles the picker searches.
From the Scientific Style and Format: The CSE Manual for Authors, Editors, and Publishers, 9th edition (2024), published by the Council of Science Editors, as encoded in the open Citation Style Language style the tool uses. This page presets the name–year system. Switch to CSE (citation–sequence) in the picker if your course numbers its references. Where your department's own guide differs on a detail, the department's guide is the one your marker reads.
Check the essay's grammar, tighten the wording, or summarise a source before you cite it. One plan covers every tool.
Each page opens the generator with that style already selected, shows what the tool prints for six real sources, and explains the style's rules. The picker above the list reaches more than 10,000 styles in all.
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