If you're wondering whether your reference management programme or writing tool supports CSL citation styles, you've come to the right place. CSL stands for ‘Citation Style Language’ – an open standard for formatting citations and bibliographies. A surprising number of tools have adopted this standard, from classic reference management programmes to static site generators and WordPress plugins.
What is CSL?
CSL stands for Citation Style Language. It is an XML-based format that describes how citations and bibliographies should be formatted – things like author order, punctuation, date format, and whether footnotes or short references are used in the text.
Since CSL is an open-source library and provides access to over 10,000 citation styles maintained by the community, many different tools have adopted the CSL language and library as their standard. This means that a .cslfile you download for Zotero will, in most cases, also work in other CSL-compatible software. To learn why CSL is particularly useful in combination with Zotero, please refer to the article 'Advantages of Zotero'.
The complete list of CSL-compatible software
The following tools support CSL citation styles in some form – from complete reference management systems to citation generators and developer libraries. The list is based on the official directory of citationstyles.org.
Reference management software
These tools are specifically designed for managing bibliographies and inserting citations into documents:
- Zotero – The most comprehensive CSL implementation with access to thousands of styles and an integrated style editor
- Paperpile
- Papers
- Qiqqa (last update is from 2024)
- ReadCube
- RefWorks
- Lean Library Workspace (formerly Sciwheel)
- Juris-M – A Zotero fork with extended support for multilingual and legal citation styles (uncertain whether Juris-M will be updated to the Zotero 8 base)
- Mendeley – supports CSL, but with some limitations compared to Zotero
- Logically
Writing and authoring tools
Tools that support CSL for writing and publication workflows:
Citation generators
Web-based tools that generate formatted citations on demand:
- Bibcitation
- BibGuru
- Citationsy
- Cite This For Me
- DOI Citation Formatter
- EasyBib
- Formatically
- MyBib
- Scribbr Citation Generator
- ZoteroBib – Zotero's lightweight, browser-based citation tool
Library and discovery systems
Tools used by libraries, universities, and academic databases:
- BibSonomy
- Citace PRO
- CrossRef
- I, Librarian
- Islandora
- Kerko
- KeyLinks
- Logos
- Open Journal Systems
- Open Science Framework
- Primo
- ReFindit
- Scholastica
- Talis Aspire
- eReserve Plus
Developer libraries and technical tools
For developers and researchers who work with citations programmatically:
- citeproc-js – the JavaScript implementation of CSL; it is the rendering engine behind Zotero and can be integrated into your own web and Node.js applications.
- citeproc-java – a Java implementation of CSL, useful for Java-based applications and build pipelines
- citeproc-el – an Emacs Lisp implementation, used in Org-mode, among other things
- citeproc (Haskell) – the Haskell implementation that pandoc has been using internally since version 2.11, replacing the older pandoc-citeproc
- citeproc-ruby – a Ruby implementation of CSL
- Citation.js
- Jekyll-Scholar
- Bibliograph
- pandoc
- papaja
- arabica
- robusta
- Zotpress (for WordPress)
Which tool is best suited for CSL?
From all of these programs Zotero die vollständigste Implementierung.
If you need a style that is not yet available – for example, for a particular university or journal – you can either customise an existing CSL style yourself or have a bespoke style created. Step-by-step instructions for editing CSL styles can be found in my article 'Customise CSL citation style for Zotero'If the required style is complex or time is running short, a Your Custom Citation Style the faster solution.
Is a tool missing from the list, or should one be removed? Please contact me!
