Spelling and style for author names
List all authors, and convert first names to initials.
Keep non-English letters and accented characters:
Forsskål Létourneau Mäkeläinen Müller
but use English equivalents for names in Cyrillic, Greek, Arabic, Hebrew or character-based languages, such as Chinese.
Reproduce the capitalisation and punctuation of the name as it appears in the reference:
van den Berg Vandenberg Van den Berg Smith-Jones O’Donnell
Keep prefixes:
Anna de Silva becomes de Silva A
Keep compound family names:
Ian Duncan Smith [Duncan Smith is the surname] becomes Duncan Smith I
Esteban Alvarez Cobos [Alvarez Cobos is the surname] becomes Alvarez Cobos E
Ignore hyphens in first names:
Marie-Louise Smith becomes Smith ML
Use the first letter of first and middle names when they contain a prefix or preposition:
D’Angelo Williams becomes Williams D
L St John Baker becomes Baker LS
Omit degrees, titles and postnominals associated with a name:
Dr Amanda Smith becomes Smith A
Sir Michael Jones becomes Jones M
Jennifer Smith PhD becomes Smith J
Peter Daniel Steele, AM becomes Steele PD
Place rank in a family name after the initials, without punctuation, and use roman numerals:
Vincent T DeVita Jr becomes DeVita VT Jr
James G Jones II becomes Jones JG II
Omit articles before organisation names:
The University of Queensland becomes University of Queensland
Ordering author names (author–date system)
In a reference list, list all references alphabetically according to first author family names.
If there is more than one paper by the same author, list them by year, with the earliest year first:
Jones AB (1990).
Jones AB (1991).
If there is more than 1 paper by a single author in the same year, list in the sequence the citations appear in the text, and add a, b and so on after the year.
If there is more than 1 paper by multiple authors with the same first author, first list the papers that have only 2 authors, in alphabetical order and then by year. Follow these with the papers that have 3 or more authors (ie all references that appear in the text as ‘et al’), arranged alphabetically by first author, and then by year and sequence in the main text. Note that all authors from an et al in-text citation are listed in the reference list unless a paper has more than 20 authors; in this case, list the first 6 authors followed by et al. If a series of references published in the same year are cited for the first time in the text together, list them by name of first author, then by name of second author, and so on:
Jones AB & Brown LM (2004).
Jones AB & Smith CD (1989).
Jones AB, Brown LM & Smith CD (1989).
Jones AB, Wilson RS, Brown LM & Smith CD (1990a). [occurs before next reference in the text]
Jones AB, Brown LM & Smith CD (1990b).
Jones AB, Wilson RS & Smith CD (1990c).
Jones AB, Wilson RS & Brown LM (2000).
Jones AB, Brown LM & Smith CD (2010a). [This and the next 2 references are cited together in the text for the first time.]
Jones AB, Smith CD & Brown LM (2010b).
Jones AB, Wilson RS & Smith CD (2010c).
Jones M (1995).
Jones M (2010).
List corporate authors alphabetically by acronym first, followed directly by the name in full in brackets:
AGAL (Australian Government Analytical Laboratories) (1990). Managing chemical analysis, Australian Government Publishing Service, Canberra.
Apply the following additional principles:
- Order letter by letter, ignoring spaces, hyphens and apostrophes
Masters
McNamara (do not order as if it were Mac)
Medhurst
M’Veigh
Oaks
O'Brien
Sargent
St John
- Treat particles such as de, la, van, van de and von as part of the family name and list according to the particle; capitalisation should follow that used by the person
Carter A
de la Costa
Green B
La Fontaine J
van Beethoven
van de Kamp J
- Ignore diacritics, accents and special characters in names, and treat them as if the mark were absent
à [treated as a] Ç [treated as C] ü [treated as u]