Visual CSL Editor – Customization of Citation Styles and the implementation in Zotero

Do you want to customize an existing citation style to match your personal preferences?

Changing an existing citation style according to personal preferences is simple and easy by using the Visual CSL Editor.

Once customized, you can apply the newly created style while working on your documents in Zotero.

Useful Links

Selecting a citation style close to your desired format allows you to customize and implement it in Zotero, ensuring that bibliographies and in-text citations are automatically generated to match your defined preferences without requiring manual changes.

Examples of possible customizations include formatting elements in the bibliography, such as bolding or italicizing author names, journal titles, or article titles; adding a period after each entry; modifying the format of in-text citations (e.g., changing (1) to [1]); adjusting the bibliography’s sorting order; or setting a limit on the number of authors before “et al.” is used.

Here are instructions for finding, editing, and using your desired citation style.

1. Find a Reference Citation Style

The first step is to find the citation style on which your customizations will be based.

Enter the Visual CSL Editor page. There you can search for existing citation style by two options:

Search by name – If you already know the name of the citation style you want to edit.
Search by example – If you’re not sure of the style name but know the desired format of the final citation, you can use this tool to find styles that best match your example.

2. Edit: Personal customization

Start Editing

Once you’ve chosen the citation style template, start editing by selecting “Edit Style.”

Edit the In-Text Citation Style

There are a lot of options for in-text customization. In the following example we used the IEEE citation style as a reference and changed the in-text citation style to bold numbers, removed the parentheses, and chose for the number to appear in superscript.

Each click on the example highlights where you can modify its appearance, and conversely, any changes made will be reflected in the example pane.

in-text

Edit the Bibliography Style

Each click on the example bibliography part will open the options for customization. In the following example we took the IEEE citation style as a reference and changed it to author names in bold and underlined, title in uppercase letters only and source title in bold and italic.

bibliography

3. Cite: In the new style you’ve created

Follow these instructions to apply your new citation style in Zotero reference manager.

Change the name of the style – go to the top of the page and change the name of the style to a new name. In the example below we changed the name from IEEE to “My-Own-Style”

Save – click on ‘Style’ then ‘Save Style’ and keep the file in your downloads folder.
Add to Zotero – in Zotero go to ‘Edit’ – ‘Settings’ – ‘Cite’ and click on the ‘+’ icon to add a new style and upload the CSL file.
Use it for citing – close Zotero and any Word documents that are open, then open a new document. Your new style will be available under ‘Document Preferences’ in Zotero’s Word plugin.

Interested but don’t have the time? Contact us and send examples of the desired style, and we will create it for you.