Recently, a client required me to edit their medical manuscript to the style manual Scientific Style and Format: The CSE Manual for Authors, Editors, and Publishers (7th edition). This style manual, published by the Council of Science Editors in 2006, might be of interest to people who write and submit articles in all scientific disciplines, especially chemical, microbial, plant, zoological, genetic, and medical sciences. To quote the preface: “This manual’s content on special scientific conventions is generally organized according to a rising scale of dimensions, starting with the fundamental units of matter and proceeding up through chemical and cellular components, microorganisms and more complex organisms, to the planet Earth and the rest of the universe” (p. ix).

In my role as a medical editor, I believe the AMA Manual of Style (American Medical Association) is more appropriate for my work, but the CSE certainly might be more appropriate for other scientific disciplines.

If you need to use the CSE citation style, these two websites are among several which offer “cheat sheets” to make your task easier:

Ohio State University cheat sheet on citation style

Dakota State University cheat sheet on citation style

You might also be interested in a thoughtful and very complete review of the CSE by Geoff Hart: http://www.geoff-hart.com/articles/2007/CSE-guide.htm.