Editorial commentary
CSE (the Council of Science Editors) is an international membership organization for editorial professionals working in the sciences. It describes its purpose as serving members in the scientific, scientific-publishing and information-science communities by fostering networking, education, discussion and exchange. In practice CSE is known for two outputs that circulate far beyond its own membership: The CSE Manual (published for eight editions as Scientific Style and Format), which is the source of what journals call “CSE style”; and its Recommendations for Promoting Integrity in Scientific Journal Publications, long referred to as the CSE white paper.
History: from the Conference of Biology Editors to CSE
CSE was founded in 1957 as the Conference of Biology Editors, established by the American Institute of Biological Sciences with National Science Foundation funding. It incorporated in 1965 as the Council of Biology Editors and opened membership beyond biology to editors across scientific publishing. On 1 January 2000 it took its present name, the Council of Science Editors, to reflect that broader membership.
Two publication lines run through that history. The society issued the first edition of the Style Manual for Biological Journals in 1960 — the ancestor of today’s manual. And its member periodical, launched in 1978 as CBE Views, was renamed Science Editor in 2000 alongside the organization itself; it remains CSE’s journal for practitioner articles on editing and publishing practice.
The CSE Manual (formerly Scientific Style and Format)
CSE’s style manual is its most widely used product. Through the eighth edition (2014) it was titled Scientific Style and Format: The CSE Manual for Authors, Editors, and Publishers. For the ninth edition the title order was inverted: The CSE Manual, Ninth Edition: Scientific Style and Format for Authors, Editors, and Publishers, published by the University of Chicago Press in 2024 at 880 pages. It is sold in print and as an annual online subscription at csemanual.org.
The manual’s scope runs from style conventions through publishing procedures to citation practice, and CSE positions it as a reference for authors, editors, publishers, students and translators across all areas of science rather than for one discipline. Its coverage of scientific nomenclature — taxonomic names, chemical and drug names, gene and protein symbols, units and quantities — is the part that has no real equivalent in the general-purpose style manuals.
The three CSE documentation systems
What most people mean by “CSE style” is the manual’s reference apparatus, and there is no single one. The manual sets out three systems for referring to sources in text:
- Citation–sequence. Superscript or bracketed numbers in the text; the end-reference list is ordered by the sequence in which each source first appears.
- Citation–name. Numbers in the text as above, but the end-reference list is built first (alphabetically) and then numbered, so the in-text numbers are not in order of appearance.
- Name–year. Author surname and year in the text, with an alphabetical end-reference list.
End references have essentially the same format in all three; the main difference is where the publication date sits in the name–year system. CSE’s own guidance is that all three are in wide use and that the choice belongs to the publisher, not the author — so “follows CSE style” is an incomplete instruction until the journal also names the system. The manual itself uses citation–sequence for its own references.
Recommendations for Promoting Integrity in Scientific Journal Publications
CSE’s ethics document — the one that occupies roughly the position COPE‘s Core Practices occupy for COPE members — is titled Recommendations for Promoting Integrity in Scientific Journal Publications. It was first published in 2006, revised in full in 2009 and again in 2012, and since May 2018 has been maintained on a rolling basis, with individual sections added or revised rather than the whole document reissued.
It is organised in three parts:
- 1.0 Introduction.
- 2.0 Roles and Responsibilities in Publishing — separate subsections for editors, authors, reviewers, sponsors and publishers, plus media relations, diversity/equity/inclusion, and social media.
- 3.0 Identification of Research Misconduct and Guidelines for Action — types of misconduct, international models for handling it, responding to suspect manuscripts, digital-image manipulation, corrections to the literature, and handling third-party inquiries.
The practical difference from COPE’s material is one of form. COPE’s best-known outputs are decision flowcharts for a specific incident in front of an editor, backed by a members-only case-advice Forum. CSE’s is a single standing reference document covering roles and misconduct categories, which a journal cites in its own policies rather than consulting mid-case.
Membership and audience
Membership is open to editorial professionals in the sciences — journal editors, managing and production editors, manuscript editors, publishers and publishing staff, and others in scientific information work. Membership is individual, which is the structural point that separates CSE from COPE: COPE’s members are journals, publishers and institutions, whereas a CSE member is a person, and the manual and recommendations are addressed to that person’s craft. CSE also runs an annual meeting and a programme of short courses and webinars, and publishes Science Editor for members.
CSE’s remit is all of science, not medicine specifically. That is what places it opposite WAME and ICMJE, both of which are medical-journal bodies.
How CSE differs from COPE, ICMJE and WAME
The four bodies are routinely confused because their guidance overlaps. They differ in who belongs to them, what they produce, and what they can do about a breach:
- CSE — individual membership, all scientific disciplines. Produces a style and format manual plus a standing integrity-recommendations document. It is the only one of the four whose flagship publication is a manuscript-preparation and citation reference rather than an ethics framework.
- COPE — membership of journals, publishers and institutions, all disciplines. Produces Core Practices, case flowcharts and retraction guidelines, and runs a case-advice service. Process- and incident-focused; it does not set authorship criteria or manuscript style.
- ICMJE — not a membership organization at all, but a small self-appointed working group of medical-journal editors. Produces the Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals, including the four authorship criteria that most of scholarly publishing now uses.
- WAME — individual membership of medical-journal editors, founded 1995. Produces consensus policy statements on editorial ethics.
None of the four is a regulator. Membership of CSE is not an accreditation of a journal, and CSE has no mechanism to compel a correction or retraction; the same is true of COPE, whose escalation options stop at statements about a member or removal from the membership list.
One practical consequence for editors: these documents are complementary rather than competing. A science journal outside medicine can reasonably follow ICMJE’s authorship criteria, cite COPE’s flowcharts for misconduct procedure, and set its house style with The CSE Manual, without conflict — and CSE and ICMJE are the two of the four that are not co-authors of the Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing, which COPE, WAME, DOAJ and OASPA issue jointly.
References
- Council of Science Editors, “About CSE” and “History of CSE,” councilscienceeditors.org
- Council of Science Editors, “Scientific Style and Format” and “CSE Manual,” councilscienceeditors.org
- Council of Science Editors, The CSE Manual, Ninth Edition: Scientific Style and Format for Authors, Editors, and Publishers (University of Chicago Press, 2024)
- The CSE Manual Online, “The CSE-Style Citation Quick Guide” and “History of Scientific Style and Format,” csemanual.org
- Council of Science Editors, Recommendations for Promoting Integrity in Scientific Journal Publications (first published 2006; full updates 2009 and 2012; rolling updates since May 2018), councilscienceeditors.org
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