Citation Assistance Resource Guide: CSE-9 Citation Style

In-Text Citations

In-Text citations are the shorter versions of the complete citation found in the Reference List at the end of the paper. They are used within the body of your paper any time you are referencing information from a source. Using in-text citations allows the reader to pinpoint what source you are gathering your information from, and it helps avoid plagiarism by providing credit where credit is due. 

In the CSE citation style, in-text citations appear in parentheses directly after the information that is being cited, which means it may appear in the middle of a sentence or at the end of a sentence. In text citations include the author’s name and the publication date.

Examples of In-Text Citations

The rapid discovery of the unique mechanisms underlying crown gall disease demonstrated how quickly an area could advance given significant investment and competition (Zambryski 1988).

Initial infection of tubers by H. solani occurs in the field either from the seed tuber (Jellis and Taylor 1977) or soil (Merida and Loria 1994).

For example, terrestrial carbon can play a central role in supporting lake food webs (Pace et al. 2004), while the problem of aquatic ecosystem eutrophication is driven by urban and agricultural land use that contributes nutrients to downstream aquatic systems (Carpenter et al. 1998).

The CSE citation style does not have specific guidelines for citing a direct quotation because they are most often not used in scientific writing. However, they do advise if you are using a direct quote to also include page numbers in the in-text citation. 

“These results clearly contradict those published in 2004 by the Smith lab.” (Jones 2008, p. 56).

CSE also does not advise using indirect quotes (when you are quoting a person/information that is found in another source). They instead advise to try and find the original source. If the original source cannot be found and an indirect quote/citation needs to be used, you will cite the secondary source. The original can be acknowledged in the text, but only include the secondary source in your reference list. 

Here is an example of what an indirect in-text citation would look like: 

(Rawls 1971, cited in Brown 2008)

Here is an example of what the reference list citation would look like, which would only include the secondary source: 

Brown PG. 2008. The Commonwealth of Life: Economics for a Flourishing Earth. 2nd ed. Black Rose Books.