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Requesting Styles

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rmzelle edited this page Oct 30, 2011 · 24 revisions

Requesting Styles

A few members of the Zotero user community donate time to create new CSL styles and update existing ones in response to users requests. As their donated time is limited, please follow the instructions below to make the process of requesting styles as efficient as possible. Alternatively, you can also try editing CSL styles yourself.

New Styles

  1. Make sure that the style you're requesting isn't already available in the style repository.
  2. Search the Zotero forums to see if there is already a forum thread about the style you want to request. If there is a thread, you may be able to contribute crucial information that allows one of the community members to create it, or learn the (technical) reasons why the style cannot currently be supported.
  3. If you can't find an existing thread, create one in the Citation Styles section of the forums. Use "Style Request: [name of style]" for the title of your starting post.
  4. Subscribe to (email) notifications for your thread. A community member might ask you for additional information, and this way you'll get notified when your style is done.

Dependent Styles

It is common for multiple publications to share the same style (e.g. "Nature" and "Nature Biotechnology" uses the same style). To avoid having exact duplicates in the style repository, all of which would have to be maintained individually, CSL supports dependent styles. A dependent style (e.g. named "Nature Biotechnology") simply points to the more generic independent style with the same style formatting ("Nature"). Creating dependent styles is much faster than creating independent styles, so please mention in your style request whether the requested style is already present in the style repository under another name.

Changes to Existing Styles

=====2) Get your style's details=====

  • Similar style: Which existing style is close to the style you need? Take a look at the list of styles in the style repository after checking the "Show only unique styles" check box to remove duplicates. You can hover your mouse over the style links to preview citations in each of those styles. You can also paste chrome://zotero/content/tools/cslpreview.xul into your Firefox location bar to launch a preview of selected items from your Zotero library in all the styles you currently have installed. Find a style that is close to the one you are requesting. Your best bet is often styles from the same discipline. So for example styles in medical journals usually resemble Vancouver/AMA style, many engineering journals are similar to IEEE, footnoted styles as used in many humanities are often close the the Chicago style etc. Often journals may even indicate this in their instruction for authors by stating "for any further questions refer to".

  • Differences from similar style: The next step is to itemize the precise differences that need to be implemented to make that existing style into the style you need. Doing this will give the creation of the style a big jump-start. The most time-consuming part of style creation is not the technical part, but understanding how a style works and how it differs from existing styles. At a minimum you should carefully compare the output from the similar style to the style you are requesting for books, book sections, journal articles, and websites. Pay close attention to issues such as punctuation, the use of abbreviations (such as pp., eds., journal abbreviations), formatting (italics, bold), the use of et al in the text and the bibliography (after how many authors, how many authors are displayed), the exact way a URL is cited (Is accessed date given? What is the exact phrasing, such as retrieved from, accessed) etc. Doing a thorough job means that you will get your style more quickly and you take up less valuable volunteer time.

  • Link to style guide: Find a reputable web page that describes your style and post a link to it in your request. If there is no good link, contact the organization that supplies the style guide and request better documentation. If possible, also post a link to a freely available copy of a work that follows the specific style, as this can often clarify issues not answered in the style guide. You can usually find a freely available pdf (e.g. on an authors homepage) by searching for a recent article title of the journal in question with google scholar.

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