For publications that use Harvard-style (i.e., name–date) citations, eXtyles Reference Sorting can be run after Bibliographic Reference Processing to sort reference lists alphabetically and according to the editorial style recommended by the APA (American Psychological Association), Chicago (Chicago Manual of Style), CSE (Council of Science Editors), Cell Press, and SGM style guides.

APA, Chicago, and CSE Styles

For publications that use APA, Chicago, or CSE style guides, Reference Sorting will follow these conventions:

Author surname parts such as “van” or “la” are included as part of the surname (i.e., they are not grouped with the author initials).
Alphabetization is word by word (e.g., “Van Stronheim” will be listed before “Vanstone”).
“Mc” and “St.” are alphabetized as typed, not as if spelled out as “Mac” and “Saint”.
Jr., Sr., III, and other suffixes are ignored during the sorting process.

Cell Press and SGM Styles

Alternatively, Reference Sorting can be used to reorder reference lists alphabetically and according to the editorial style used by Cell Press and the Society for General Microbiology (SGM). This latter style follows the following rules for ordering references with the same first-author surname:

All single-author references are listed, subsorted by year and then year letter (e.g., 2006a).
All two-author references are then listed, subsorted by second author surname, then by year, and then by year letter.
All references with three or more authors are listed, subsorted by year.

When ordering references with different first-author surnames, the following alphabetization conventions apply:

Author surname parts such as “van” or “la” are included as part of the surname (i.e., they are not grouped with the author initials).
Alphabetization is word-by-word (e.g., “Van Stronheim” will be listed before “Vanstone”).
“Mc” and “St.” are alphabetized as typed, not as if spelled out as “Mac” and “Saint”.
Jr., Sr., III, and other suffixes are ignored during the sorting process.

On this page

Bibliographic Reference Processing and Validation

How to use

Can't find Reference Sorting on the menu?

Depending on your organization’s configuration, this process may also appear on the Advanced Processing menu as Sort Name-Date References.

To use Reference Sorting:

Run eXtyles at least up through Bibliographic Processing. Sorting will not work on unprocessed references. We recommend, however, that sorting be run after PubMed/CrossRef Checking, where it appears on the Advanced Processing menu.
The sorting results will be more accurate if all reference author lists are correctly identified by eXtyles. Therefore, we recommend that any problematic unknown or misparsed references be corrected and reprocessed before Reference Sorting is run.
Select eXtyles > Advanced Processing > Reference Sorting. eXtyles will sort your reference list according to one of the two styles described previously, as configured according to your organization’s preference.

If the order of two or more references is ambiguous (for instance, if there are three “Smith J, 2000” references), Reference Sorting will insert a warning.

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