Style Requirements

Style Requirements

Styles that are submitted to the style repository must conform to the following requirements:

1. The file name of the style must consist solely of lowercase roman letters (a-z), digits (0-9), single hyphens to separate words (-), and a ".csl" extension. In most cases the name should be written out in full, e.g. "journal-of-results.csl" instead of "jor.csl".
2. The style ID (set with the <id/> element) must be of the form "http://www.zotero.org/styles/file-name" (replace file-name with the actual file name, without the ".csl" extension, e.g. "http://www.zotero.org/styles/apa" for apa.csl).
3. The style self-link (set with <link href="..." rel="self"/>) , which indicates where the style can be found online, must correspond to the style ID (e.g., <link href="http://www.zotero.org/styles/apa" rel="self"/>).
4. The style must be released under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 License (set with the <rights/> element). Use <rights license="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/"> This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 License</rights>
   ("This" should follow directly after the preceding ">" and be on the same line).
5. If your style is largely derived from an existing style, delete the original listing of authors and contributors listed, and point to the original template style with a link in the style's info section, e.g. <link href="http://www.zotero.org/styles/original-style" rel="template"/>
6. If your style only targets a single language (e.g. US English if you're submitting a style for an American journal), set the default-locale attribute on <style/> to the desired locale ("en-US" for US English; for the list of available locales, see https://github.com/citation-style-language/locales/wiki).
7. If the style is for a journal, include the ISSN number(s) in the info section as <issn>1234-5678</issn>, and the electronic ISSN as <eissn>1234-5678</eissn>.
8. To facilitate future updates of the style, include a link to a style guide (or "instructions for authors") in the info section whenever possible, marked as documentation, e.g. <link href="http://www.styleguide.edu" rel="documentation"/>
9. Make sure that your style validates against the CSL schema.

Finally, while not a strict requirement, we prefer XML that is indented with 2 spaces per level.