Referencing is an essential part of scholarly writing, as it provides credit where it's due, and links together published research. However, manually formatting references can be incredibly time-consuming and very frustrating. SmartCite helps you make quick work of formatting your document in a fraction of the time to simplify this painstaking task for you.


While most journals and academic departments will guide you towards a specific formatting style for submissions, it's easy to get lost when trying to navigate the over 9000 available styles. Many may look similar to one another, but there are plenty of slight differences between them. The great thing about SmartCite, if you need to switch styles, you can do that at any time.


An easy way to think about citation styles is that most of the styles fall into a few main style categories: "author-date", "author" and "numeric styles." Below you will find general examples, popular styles from each category, plus links to a full list of styles of that particular type. All these styles are included in the export pane of the web/desktop app (right menu), within the PDF viewer in the left menu, and in SmartCite for Word and Google Docs.) 


“Author” Styles

Example inline: (Marcon et al.]

Example Bibliography: (organized alphabetically by author)

Bochkarev, Alexey, et al. “Structure of the Single-Stranded-DNA-Binding Domain of Replication Protein A Bound to           DNA.” Nature, vol. 385, no. 6612, 1997, pp. 176–81, doi:10.1038/385176a0.

Marcon, Edyta, et al. “Assessment of a Method to Characterize Antibody Selectivity and Specificity for Use in                   Immunoprecipitation.” Nature Methods, vol. 12, no. 8, 2015, p. 725, doi:10.1038/nmeth.3472.

Shen, Yang, et al. “Consistent Blind Protein Structure Generation from NMR Chemical Shift Data.” Proceedings of the       National Academy of Sciences, vol. 105, no. 12, 2008, pp. 4685–90, doi:10.1073/pnas.0800256105.

[View all author styles] 


“Author-date” Styles

Example inline: (Vedadi et al., 2011; Marcon et al., 2015)

Example bibliography: (organized alphabetically by author)

Bochkarev, A. et al. (1997) ‘Structure of the single-stranded-DNA-binding domain of replication protein A bound to DNA’, Nature, 385(6612), pp. 176–181. doi: 10.1038/385176a0.

Marcon, E. et al. (2015) ‘Assessment of a method to characterize antibody selectivity and specificity for use in immunoprecipitation’, Nature Methods, 12(8), p. 725. doi: 10.1038/nmeth.3472.

Shen, Y. et al. (2008) ‘Consistent blind protein structure generation from NMR chemical shift data’, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 105(12), pp. 4685–4690. doi: 10.1073/pnas.0800256105.

Vedadi, M. et al. (2011) ‘A chemical probe selectively inhibits G9a and GLP methyltransferase activity in cells’, Nature Chemical Biology, 7(8), pp. 566–574. doi: 10.1038/nchembio.599

Zhong, N. et al. (2015) ‘Optimizing Production of Antigens and Fabs in the Context of Generating Recombinant Antibodies to Human Proteins’, PLOS ONE, 10(10), p. e0139695. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0139695

[View all author-date styles]


“Numeric” Styles

Example inline:  [1, 2]  [3]

Example bibliography: typically organized either alphabetically by author, or put in the order by which they have been first cited in the document.)

1. Vedadi, M. et al. A chemical probe selectively inhibits G9a and GLP methyltransferase activity in cells. Nature Chemical Biology 7, 566–574 (2011).
2. Marcon, E. et al. Assessment of a method to characterize antibody selectivity and specificity for use in immunoprecipitation. Nature Methods 12, 725 (2015).
3. Shen, Y. et al. Consistent blind protein structure generation from NMR chemical shift data. Proc National Acad Sci 105, 4685–4690 (2008).
4. Bochkarev, A., Pfuetzner, R. A., Edwards, A. M. & Frappier, L. Structure of the single-stranded-DNA-binding domain of replication protein A bound to DNA. Nature 385, 176–181 (1997).
5. Zhong, N. et al. Optimizing Production of Antigens and Fabs in the Context of Generating Recombinant Antibodies to Human Proteins. Plos One 10, e0139695 (2015).