Manually edit citation styles in Mendeley Desktop

There should be a way to manually edit the citation styles in Mendeley Desktop, preferably in a WYSIWYG editor.

5,847 votes

AdminMendeley (Admin, Mendeley) shared this idea · Nov 29, 2008 · Flag idea as inappropriate… · Admin →

Jutamanee Martchamadol shared a merged idea: New citation style according to Asian Institute of Technology (AIT) · Oct 31, 2012 ·

Gustavo shared a merged idea: Easily way to edit the citation styles · Oct 5, 2012 ·

Miri shared a merged idea: Please allow to create our own styles for references · Jul 25, 2012 ·

JS Jakobsen shared a merged idea: Clean up citation styles - otherwise, Mendeley is pretty useless · Jun 27, 2012 ·

Anonymous shared a merged idea: I suggest that should be athird options for citation styles. These options you ca adapt a style from another already existed · Mar 30, 2012 ·

Anonymous shared a merged idea: Fix American Chemical Society citation styles. · Mar 15, 2012 ·

Anonymous shared a merged idea: Journal Abbreviations in citations are not according to Citation Styles · Feb 27, 2012 ·

Anonymous shared a merged idea: Ability to customize citation styles. · Jan 31, 2012 ·

RCC shared a merged idea: Include tool for editing and creating new citation styles. · Jan 25, 2012 ·

Philippe shared a merged idea: A citation style editor · Sep 29, 2011 ·

Michael shared a merged idea: generate own citation style · Sep 5, 2011 ·

[Deleted] shared a merged idea: Could you please generate a citation style for "Helgoland Marine Research"? · Jul 7, 2011 ·

abs014 shared a merged idea: Update vancouver citation style · Jun 29, 2011 ·

Rafael shared a merged idea: Urge citations styles in ecology and evolution journals · Jun 16, 2011 ·

Daniel Doyle shared a merged idea: fix the myriad problems with Bluebook Citation styles for mac desktop MSWorld plugin. contact me · Jan 4, 2011 ·

Nicolas P shared a merged idea: citation style options · Sep 8, 2010 ·

Dongxi Zheng shared a merged idea: Customzed citation styles · Jun 15, 2010 ·

Giovanni Marco Dall'Olio shared a merged idea: is the PLOS CompBio citation style correct? · Jun 3, 2010 ·

Brandon Barker shared a merged idea: NIH Grant citation style · Mar 20, 2010 ·

Colleen Strawhacker shared a merged idea: add the American Antiquity citation format. · Feb 18, 2010 ·

Frederico Vieira shared a merged idea: Add support for additional Brazilian citation styles · Apr 25, 2009 ·

AdminMendeley (Admin, Mendeley) shared a merged idea: Additional citation styles · Nov 29, 2008 ·

completed ·

AdminMendeley (Admin, Mendeley) responded · Nov 15, 2012

It’s been a long road, but we’ve finally shipped a CSL editor in Mendeley Desktop 1.7.

It’s available via the download links on Mendeley.com, and auto-updates will be available shortly.

688 comments

dodgey-Damo commented · October 6, 2011 11:41 p.m. · Flag as inappropriate · Delete

Manually editing citation styles should be viewed as a CRITICAL update by mendeley staff. Without it mendeley is almost sensational, but also really sucks. Not having this feature is so frustrating.
dodgey-Damo commented · October 6, 2011 11:37 p.m. · Flag as inappropriate · Delete

I have finally found a citation Style "Fungal Ecology" which italisies et-al

However in the reference section it fails to place a "." between author initials or a .," after authors last inital...
Can anyone help edit the citation style so I can get it to b\put the "." and the "," in ?

Dylan, B.F., Blogs, A.B., Doe, P.Q. 2011

Can anyone tell me what "exactly" I have to write and where to write it? I tried in <macro name = "author"> but that doesnt seem to be right....
Loïse Lenne commented · September 29, 2011 5:54 a.m. · Flag as inappropriate · Delete

There is supposed to be a solution on this video : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rgb0Ldb6LhM

I have tried, but I can not open the support file, and I don't know which software to use...
ludi commented · September 29, 2011 2:18 a.m. · Flag as inappropriate · Delete

I do agree that there should be manually edit citation style because even with specific style , names of journal listed are in original name where as it should be in abbreviation.
Anonymous commented · September 27, 2011 2:08 p.m. · Flag as inappropriate · Delete

i don't have the citation tab on my mendely?
Omar Mian commented · September 23, 2011 5:37 a.m. · Flag as inappropriate · Delete

I think a dedicated voting system for missing citation styles would be useful (separate from this general forum). That way, you (Mendeley) could gauge which styles are in most demand and use that as a basis for what new styles to add.

In order the lower the workload for writing the styles, there could also be an incentive system for users to write styles and submit them to Mendeley. For example, perhaps Mendeley could reward users with extra storage space (or some other reward) after other users have used the submitted style and validated that it works properly. The amount of reward could be scaled according to the level of demand for the style.
ebioman commented · September 21, 2011 2:18 a.m. · Flag as inappropriate · Delete

Hi
I made a Biochemical Journal Style, if somebody is interested
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/10398592/bj.csl
AdminRobert Knight (Admin, Mendeley) commented · September 20, 2011 8:42 a.m. · Flag as inappropriate · Delete

There is a blank citation style available called "Hide citations and bibliography" from the Get More Styles tab which could be used temporarily to get the citation count for an empty bibliography. I see an error trying to use that citation style with Mendeley Desktop 1.0.1 and LibreOffice though - I'll file a ticket to investigate.
Cheron commented · September 20, 2011 8:21 a.m. · Flag as inappropriate · Delete

@osm: Thank you for your reply and the link! As for why do a word count that way - I've been told to! :-) It's been requested for my PhD and was also requested for every assignment and the thesis for my MSc as well.
Omar Mian commented · September 19, 2011 2:03 p.m. · Flag as inappropriate · Delete

Cheron: The first part of your comment is to do with editing the in-text citation, not editing citation styles. In-text citations are editable, but the implementation is not typical of other reference managers. See comments here: http://feedback.mendeley.com/forums/4941-mendeley-feedback/suggestions/197476-fix-implement-exlude-author-year-in-the-wor?ref=title

I'm curious, why is it useful to do a word count that leaves out the citations? You probably need to create a new idea for that one.
Cheron commented · September 19, 2011 11:59 a.m. · Flag as inappropriate · Delete

Hello. I'm just starting my PhD and am hoping to use Mendely. Have experimented with it some, but if others are actually having the same problem I have, it boggles my mind how this software can be of practical use for creating bibliographies and citations within documents.

IS IT REALLY IMPOSSIBLE to edit citations in the text so that you don’t have the whole thing each time – like you want to leave out the author and/or date?
E.g. ... in Taylor describes this phenomenon at length (2007, pp. 234-250) Rather than Mendeley wanting to put in (Taylor, 2007, pp. 234-250) OR Taylor describes this in her 2007 work (234-250)... What about using ibid or op. cit.?

I though citations might be editable, but only using a certain style - at least according to an error message that comes up when I'm in Word. If so, can someone tell me what style that is?

And if citations aren't editable, how are people using this software? I can't tell whether to wait out a fix to this problem, but I might give it a go if there's some other use for it and the fix will happen in weeks rather than months.

Also - of far less importance - has anyone figured out how to use do a word count in MS Word that leaves out the citations. I know how to do it in EndNote, but not here... Thanks for any clarification offered.
Anonymous commented · September 15, 2011 2:20 p.m. · Flag as inappropriate · Delete

please please please! Add style for Journal of Animal Science and also for Applied Animal Behavior Science!
Martyna commented · September 14, 2011 1:59 p.m. · Flag as inappropriate · Delete

Hi everybody,
I do really urgently need some help!
I changed a Citation Style, changed the name and the ID and did anything I had to...
the problem is: once I add it to my citationStyles-1.0 folder, it does not appear in Mendeley's Citation list... instead there is an empty line which definetly belongs to the style (I tried it out) can please anybody help? need to finish my thesis and nothing works...

here is the style: https://gist.github.com/1217713

and here is the validation:
http://validator.nu/?doc=https%3A%2F%2Fgist.github.com%2Fraw%2F1217338%2F62387312d736b888a9e5b6d447ce07f889e05399%2Fmartyna.csl&charset=UTF-8&schema=https%3A%2F%2Fgithub.com%2Fcitation-style-language%2Fschema%2Fraw%2Fv1.0%2Fcsl.rnc&laxtype=yes

Thanks a lot!!
Pieter commented · September 14, 2011 11:09 a.m. · Flag as inappropriate · Delete

Please add Citation style of Plant and Soil (South Africa)
claudia commented · September 13, 2011 6:57 a.m. · Flag as inappropriate · Delete

Absolutly, the most important!
claudia commented · September 13, 2011 6:57 a.m. · Flag as inappropriate · Delete

Absolutly, the most important!
Victor commented · September 12, 2011 5:09 a.m. · Flag as inappropriate · Delete

I was also looking for that citation style
cgnguyen commented · September 10, 2011 3:53 a.m. · Flag as inappropriate · Delete

I would like this as well.
kanti commented · September 7, 2011 11:35 a.m. · Flag as inappropriate · Delete

Please add Citation style of
Global Change Biology and other environmental science JOurnal
David Pérez commented · September 2, 2011 2:59 p.m. · Flag as inappropriate · Delete

I have the same problem. It's the first time I use Mendeley for generating bibliography in a medical manuscript (Openoffice) and Vancouver style works wrong. It also seems that journal articles are displayed as web pages.