Citation Style Language

The Citation Style Language (CSL ) is an XML language for describing formats for bibliographic references and citation. The functionality is similar to the description of the citation. Bst files of BibTeX, however, the performance goes beyond that.

CSL was initiated by Bruce D' Arcus and is defined using RELAX NG. The language is currently used by different reference management programs, including Mendeley, Docear4Word, and Zotero. An integration of CSL in future versions of the standardized OpenDocument format is being considered.