Table of Contents

Standard Citation Styles

Professional associations produce style guides in order to standardise citation methods in their field. These standards should be adhered to, unless there is a very good reason to use or create another style.

Below is a list of some professional association style guides. Corresponding CSL styles for most of them are at the Zotero style repository.

If you know of other official association style guides, please add them
(this is a wiki, and you are welcome to contribute).

Many style guides are in the form of books which are not freely available; your library may hold a copy, and there are also webpages like this and this which give free and simple guidelines on using the styles correctly.

The use of unique identifiers, such as the DOI, is increasingly encouraged in citation styles.

International Standards

National Standards

Standards in Law

Standards in the Humanities

Standards in Sciences

Chemical, Physical and Life Sciences

Engineering, Computer Science and Technology

Social and Behavioural Sciences

Medical and Biomedical

Commercial Style guides

In addition a number of commercial style guides are published, for example.


More examples of styles in use in particular fields can be seen at the Wikipedia page on Style guides