Preface

Overview

The most significant changes in the eighth edition include closing up “email” and “website” and making them lowercase. The subcommittee recognizes that these moves are widely debated and may still be considered controversial by some, but we ultimately decided that dropping the hyphen in “email” and closing the space in “website” are the progressive and responsible ways to go and will keep CSE style on the front end of linguistic evolution. Other noteworthy changes include shifting the reference citation format within each chapter to citation–sequence, as previously mentioned, so that now each chapter’s references section is numbered in the order in which each reference is cited instead of numbered alphabetically (as in the seventh edition); and adding new recommendations and examples to Chapter 29 for citing e-books, online images and infographics, podcasts and webcasts, online videos, blogs, and social networking sites.

We have also updated the language throughout the manual to be in line with a more integrated online and electronic publishing environment: we changed terms such as “World Wide Web” to “Internet” or rephrased to say “available/published online” or similar, and we removed most mentions of antiquated media such as magnetic tapes, floppy disks, typewriters, handwritten manuscripts, videocassettes, and audiocassettes, except where noted in historical contexts.

In an effort to reduce confusion for authors and editors using this manual, we removed most typesetting- and publishing-specific details from each chapter as appropriate and instead provide that information as an online-only publishing appendix that is available at www.scientificstyleandformat.org.

Significant Chapter-Specific Updates

In Chapter 1, “Elements of a Scientific Publication”, Section 1.2.1, information was added about abstracts, which are now considered an essential part of a scientific publication, and how abstracting and indexing databases have become increasingly important in a publication’s visibility in scientific and academic communities.

Chapter 2, “Publication Policies and Practices”, provides new details about online databases and repositories (Section 2.2) and includes a new section titled “Responsibilities of Publishers, Journal Owners, and Sponsoring Societies” (Section 2.9).

Recent changes to copyright application instructions are outlined in Chapter 3, “The Basics of Copyright”, Section 3.2.2.2. There is also a new section in Chapter 3, “Creative Commons Licenses” (Section 3.3.4), which provides details to help users interested in making their work available to others and the various levels of licensing possible through the Creative Commons licensing office.

Chapter 4, “Alphabets, Symbols, and Signs”, contains updated information about STIX fonts (Section 4.3), including Version 1.1.0, which was released in 2012.

In response to requests from users of the seventh edition, a new section was added to Chapter 7: “Active vs. Passive Voice” (Section 7.9). Though other style manuals may have similar sections on this topic, it is as important in scientific writing as it is in other prose writing to use the correct voice. The authors of this new section provide recommendations on the appropriate place within a scientific manuscript to use each type of voice.

Chapters 12 (“Numbers, Units, Mathematical Expressions, and Statistics”) and 30 (“Accessories to Text: Tables, Figures, and Indexes”) were both significantly revised and reorganized for ease of use and to provide the user with recent updates in their respective areas. Also specified in Chapter 12 (and mentioned in Chapter 5) is a change in recommendation to now use a comma in whole numbers with 4 or more digits. The seventh edition recommended using thin spaces to separate 5 or more digits, which created more keystrokes and led to differences in the way various typesetting systems interpreted the amount of space a thin space should have, so the authors decided to simplify this and avoid discrepancies and limitations by using a comma (Section 12.1.3.1).

The title of Chapter 13 was changed from “Time and Dates” in the seventh edition to “Time, Dates, and Age Measurements”, which better encompasses the contents of the chapter. Clarifications were made to more accurately describe the use of time units and their approved abbreviations (Section 13.2.1) and how best to refer to clock time (Section 13.2.2).

In Chapter 14, “Geographic Designations”, outdated references to the USSR were removed and other country names were updated, as well as URLs for online databases of country and geographic names and postal codes.

Within Chapter 15, “The Electromagnetic Spectrum”, Section 15.2, “Longer Wavelengths”, was simplified for better understanding.

Updates were made to Chapter 18, “Chemical Kinetics and Thermodynamics”, to be in line with the most recent edition of the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) Green Book, such as the fact that the symbol for “apparent” is now “app” and the abbreviation for “fluid” is now “f” instead of “fl”.

In Chapter 19, “Analytical Chemistry”, Section 19.2.1, “Types of Techniques”, 2 new techniques were added: electron microscopy and lab-on-a-chip.

Chapter 21, “Genes, Chromosomes, and Related Molecules”, contains new information in Section 21.2, “Genetic Units, Measures, and Tools”, to address new technologies and the naming of single-nucleotide polymorphisms. There are also updated sections on cotton nomenclature (Section 21.14.7.1), soybean genetics (Section 21.14.5.3), and human genetic nomenclature (Section 21.15.7).

In Chapter 23, “Structure and Function”, Section 23.5.10, “Thermal Physiology”, was reorganized and modified for clarity.

Several significant updates were made in Chapter 26, “Astronomical Objects and Time Systems”. In Section 26.4.2, the title was changed from “Minor Planets (Asteroids) and Comets” to “Dwarf Planets and Small Solar System Bodies (Asteroids and Comets)” and the use of “minor planets” was removed throughout the chapter in accordance with the 2006 definitions from the International Astronomical Union, which famously downgraded Pluto from a planet to a dwarf planet.

Chapter 27, “Journal Style and Format”, contains some significant updates to language, including removing references to videocassettes as a modern, viable option for publication (Section 27.2, “Format”), acknowledging the increasingly prevalent use of online-only publications and parts of publications (Section 27.3.1.2), and updating references to browsers (e.g., removed mention of AltaVista; Section 27.3.1.2.2, “Production Issues”).

The title of Chapter 28 was changed from “Books, Technical Reports, Conference Proceedings, and Other Monographs” to “Published Media”, which is inclusive of all forms of publications, which are constantly changing in this age of rapid advancement in technology. The chapter was revised accordingly to allow for this in the coming years until the next edition of this manual is published.

There are also some significant updates in Chapter 29, “References”. In Section 29.3.7.11, “Audiovisuals”, we have changed our recommendation from including a physical description in a reference listing to not including it. The title of Section 29.3.7.13 was changed from “Homepages and Other Internet Material” to “Websites and Other Online Formats” and, as previously mentioned, recommendations and examples were added for reference citations to e-books, online databases, online images and infographics, podcasts and webcasts, online videos, blogs, and social networking sites. This chapter will likely need to be updated again in the next edition of this manual.

Distinctions were added in Chapter 31, “Typography and Manuscript Preparation”, to clarify the differences between “typeface”, “text attributes”, and “font” (Sections 31.1 and 31.2.1). Language was also updated throughout the chapter to accommodate electronic software systems as opposed to more print-centric tools, and Section 31.3.2, “Traditional and Electronic Mark-Up”, includes additional information about XML, HTML, and electronic devices.

Finally, Chapter 32, “Proof Correction”, was drastically updated to feature the specification in Section 32.4, “Marking Paper Proofs”, indicating mark-up recommendations to hard-copy proofs, and the addition of a new section, “Annotating PDF Proofs” (Section 32.5). The new section does not lay out its own best practices, as many are available, but it does provide helpful information covering the basics of PDF annotation as well as a few new figures depicting tools an author or editor could use, depending on the version of Adobe Acrobat that is available.