Papers and Springer Donation

Today, with 30 software products using the Citation Style Language (CSL), and a style repository with over 7700 styles, we are excited to announce that Papers and Springer have made a $5000 donation to CSL.

Our collaboration with Papers started in 2011, when Papers2 for Mac shipped with CSL-based citation features. Papers’ largest contribution to CSL came from former Papers-programmer Charles Parnot, who created a system to automatically generate CSL styles for journals with the same citation style. He used this setup to contribute over 1300 CSL styles for Springer journals, and today, over 6000 of our journal-specific CSL styles have been automatically generated. Papers also introduced the long-running and still ongoing “A Serial for a Style” program, rewarding contributors of CSL styles with free Papers licenses.

We are thankful for the appreciation and support shown through this donation. As before, funds available to the CSL project will be used to support the style repository maintainers and CSL developers, and to finance the creation of new tools. Last year, this resulted in a more user-friendly CSL validator. We migrated our in-depth documentation (including the CSL primer and specification) to a new platform that is both mobile-friendly and easier to maintain. We also improved Zotero’s built-in CSL editor.

This year, we plan to further streamline our style submission process. Submissions on GitHub are already automatically checked, but the resulting error reports are difficult to interpret. By offering a bounty, we were able to find a professional programmer who just started work to translate these automated reports into easy-to-understand feedback, and provide contributors with detailed instructions on how to correct their submissions. And last but not least, we also hope to pick up the pace again on creating the next version of CSL.