Citation styles take the metadata of any given reference (authors, title, etc.) and display this information according to the rules of the style.
Referencing a journal with multiple authors
If your reference has 10 authors, but the journal you’re submitting to requires the first 3 authors to be displayed followed by et al, using the correct style will do this for you automatically – no need to edit the reference metadata in most cases.
We recommend that you have complete metadata for all references, and let the style do the work for you.