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Changing your citation styles

Tim Hodson
  • Updated

Background

When viewing a reading list you can change how the references appear on the list using the "Citation style" menu.

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The citation styles feature in Talis Aspire Reading Lists utilises an underlying technology known as citeproc.js which is also used by the likes of Zotero and Mendeley. This means that we do not define the citation styles ourselves, but make use of style definitions which are built by the community. They are defined in the Citation Style Library which has 6,500+ styles. The styles can be browsed, searched and previewed at the Zotero Style Repository website.

How to change the citation styles available on your lists

To change the styles used in your tenancy, please:

  1. Find the styles you would like enabled using the Zotero Style Repository website. 
  2. Raise a support ticket listing the styles you would like available on your tenancy, including the name of the style as found on Zotero and the label you would like it to have in your tenancy. If you don't explicitly give us a label, we will use the name of the style as found on Zotero.
  3. Tell us which of those styles should be the default style. Note: there are some unsupported citation styles - see Unsupported Styles for more information and a list.

Is your style not currently available on Zotero? Why not cook your own!

The Citation Style Library also has a guide to editing citation styles. This provides some guidance and directs you to documentation by Zotero, as well as a CSL style editor tool by Mendeley to help you do so.

Zotero.org have an editing step-by-step guide

Top tips from the site:

  • Pick a style most like the one you are trying to create rather than create from scratch, there is a link to a search by example tool.
  • Download the style most like the one you are trying to create and open in a text editing tool, this can be done using Notepad or Text Edit or developer preferred text editing tools like jEdit.
  • The guide talks you through the different edits you can make.
  • Remember to change the style and ID so you can easily identify the new style
  • Validate the style against the CSL schema.
  • In order for it to be installed into Talis Aspire Reading List, ensure you submit and share it in Zotero Style Repository.

Unsupported Styles

There are some styles which are currently unsupported, some are due to receiving no data response from the citation style repository whilst some cannot be supported due to Talis Aspire not supporting the data required for the style.

  1. Annalen des Naturhistorischen Museums in Wien
  2. Art History
  3. Australian Historical Studies
  4. Biological Reviews
  5. Bluebook Inline
  6. Bluebook Law Review
  7. Bluebook Law Review (2)
  8. Catholic Biblical Association (full note)
  9. Council of Science Editors (author-date)
  10. Early Medieval Europe
  11. Ethics (for book reviews)
  12. Geopolitics
  13. Harvard - Swinburne University of Technology
  14. Harvard - University of Abertay Dundee
  15. History and Theory
  16. ISO-690 (note, without bibliography, Czech)
  17. Journal for the History of Astronomy
  18. Journal of Applied Philosophy
  19. Manchester University Press monographs
  20. Medical History
  21. Molecular Biology and Evolution
  22. Oryx
  23. Oxford Art Journal
  24. Pisa University Press
  25. Politische Vierteljahresschrift (German)
  26. Soziale Welt (German)
  27. Sozialpädagogisches Institut Berlin - Walter May (German)
  28. Studii Teologice
  29. The Historic Journal
  30. The Journal of Eukaryotic Microbiology
  31. The World Journal of Biological Psychiatry

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