Citation styles take the metadata of any given reference (authors, title, etc.) and display this information according to the rules of the style. This includes (among other things):
- Rules for applying et al (number of authors to show before displaying et al)
- If the journal full name or abbreviation is shown
- Formatting such as bold, italics etc applied to metadata elements
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 for example, 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. If you need help finding the correct style, or one of our styles needs an update please let us know.