Citation Styles

An Important issue for scientific writing

The most critical element when using reference management software is the citation style. A citation style is a system file that formats a publication’s bibliographic data for use in in-text citations, footnotes, and bibliographies. Once the preferred style is activated, the software generates the citations and bibliography without requiring manual correction of abbreviations, punctuation, or the order of elements. Even when a new citation is inserted after the bibliography has been generated, the program places it in the correct position in the list automatically. The output is only as accurate as the metadata stored in the library, however, so records should be checked before submission.

If the correct style is not selected, the software will not produce the expected citations and bibliography. Instructions for activating a citation and bibliography style are given in the section titled "d) Choosing, Finding, and Editing Citation Styles." Style files are written in Citation Style Language (CSL), an XML-based format, so creating one from scratch or modifying an existing one requires technical experience. It is therefore usually easier to download a ready-made file from a citation style repository and activate it in the software. If a file for the required style — APA 7th edition, for example — already exists in the repository, setup is straightforward; if it does not, the process becomes considerably more difficult.

Publishers, journal editors, graduate school boards, and faculty members can make reference management software easier to use by adopting widely used citation styles. Common styles are already bundled with most programs or available in public repositories, so authors and students can apply them immediately instead of commissioning or editing a custom style file.

Below you will find the most widely used citation styles.

American Psychological Association

The American Psychological Association (APA) style is an author–date documentation system and the most widely used standard for citing sources in psychology, education, and the social sciences [1]. It is formally defined in the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association [2], now in its 7th edition, which was released in October 2019 and remains the current version [3], [4]; the style itself is far older, having originated in 1929 as a brief, seven-page set of guidelines meant to improve the readability and consistency of scientific writing before growing into today's comprehensive manual [3]. In practice it pairs concise in-text citations that give the author's surname and the year of publication—for instance, a name and date placed in parentheses, (Author, 2020)—with an alphabetized reference list supplying full bibliographic details for every source, and it additionally governs manuscript formatting, headings, tables, and the use of bias-free, inclusive language [2]. The style is revised periodically because the scholarly environment it serves keeps changing: the citation of online material has become far more common, inclusive and non-discriminatory language has grown in importance, and the technologies that researchers and students use have evolved, so the newest edition responds to these shifts with clearer, more extensive guidance and more than a hundred worked examples spanning source types from books to social media [4]. Consistent with that aim, the 7th edition also simplified several conventions relative to the 6th: it shortened in-text citations for works by three or more authors to the first author followed by "et al.," allowed up to twenty names in a reference entry, removed the publisher's location from book references, and formatted DOIs as URLs [1]—changes intended more broadly to make the manual easier and more student-friendly to use [3].

The citation style for this article is IEEE-style numbered.

Click here to view examples of citations and bibliographies in APA 7 style.

References

[1] Best Edit & Proof Editorial Team, "APA manual 7th edition: The 9 most important changes," Best Edit & Proof, Nov. 29, 2020. [Online]. Available: https://besteditproof.com/en/academy/9-most-important-apa-7th-edition-changes. [Accessed: Jul. 17, 2026].

[2] American Psychological Association, Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, 7th ed. Washington, DC, USA: American Psychological Association, 2020.

[3] Purdue Global Academic Success Center, "APA key changes," Purdue Global Writing Center, Oct. 12, 2020. [Online]. Available: https://purdueglobalwriting.center/apa-key-changes/. [Accessed: Jul. 17, 2026].

[4] R. Streefkerk, "APA 7th edition (2020): The 17 most notable changes," Scribbr, Apr. 16, 2024. [Online]. Available: https://www.scribbr.com/apa-style/apa-seventh-edition-changes/. [Accessed: Jul. 17, 2026].

[5] M. Esgin, "Examining, comparing, and improving of the most used web based bibliographic management programs," M.S. thesis, Istanbul University, 2019. [Online]. Available: https://nek.istanbul.edu.tr/ekos/TEZ/ET000926.pdf