CSE Citation Generator
CSE name–year references, built as you type. No sign-up, and the format is applied exactly — not guessed by a model.
CSE reference
Paste a reference, or start typing. It builds as you go — there is nothing to submit.
About CSE style
CSE is the reference style of the Council of Science Editors, used across biology and the life sciences.
How CSE references work
This tool produces the CSE name–year system, where the date follows the authors and in-text citations carry author and year. CSE also defines citation–sequence and citation–name systems, which number references instead.
Applied, not generated
The format is applied by a fixed set of rules, so the same input always produces the same reference — no model decides where a comma goes.
If your department's brief differs from what you see, follow the brief. A style guide is whatever your marker says it is.
Frequently asked questions
- What is CSE citation style?
- The style of the Council of Science Editors, used widely in biology and the life sciences. It defines three systems: name–year, citation–sequence and citation–name. This tool produces the name–year system.
- Which CSE system should I use?
- Whichever your brief or journal specifies — they are not interchangeable. Name–year puts the author and date in the text; the other two use numbers. If nothing is specified, name–year is the most common in coursework.
- Why are there no periods after the initials?
- That is the CSE convention: “Fauci AS”, not “Fauci, A. S.”. Initials run together with no periods and no comma after the surname, which is what makes a CSE reference list look denser than an APA one.
- Where does the year go in CSE?
- Immediately after the authors, in every reference type — that is the defining feature of the name–year system, and the thing most often got wrong when converting from another style.
Citations are the easy part
Referencing is mechanical. The draft around it is not — ReverseGPT writes with cited sources, checks the claims and edits the prose, in one place.