Update on September 3rd, 2018
I’ve added the citation style to github. There is a stable link from my (rejected) pull request to add the style to the zotero repository: link. Another option is a github gist: link.
Original post
When I am writing a proposal to fund my research, there is often a page or word limit to keep. One of the tricks to stretch this limit is to minimize the references to their bare bones. I used to take an already short reference style, such as the one of Nature or Science, but I still had to trim these reference lists down manually. And for obvious reasons I had enough of that.
So I looked for a minimal style… but I could not find one. Thus I created my own style in Mendeley that generates a bare minimal reference list. It is a CSL (Citation Style Language) file and you can download it here or via a Mendeley-friendly link here. I have since moved to Zotero, where the citation style works flawlessly as well.
The reference list should look as in the screenshot below: only one author, no article title, short journal or publisher name, volume/page numbers, and the year of publication.
I have not found a way to control paragraph style and font format from the CSL file. So to get rid of paragraph breaks and to select a small font size (8–10pt), I have to do some post-processing. Unfortunately, the Mendeley plugin for LibreOffice resets any changes to the bibliography as soon as it refreshes, so the following steps are best left till the end. My solution is to select the Bibliography box and apply a Find and Replace to the paragraph breaks ($) substituting each of them for a single space ( ). Note: to select paragraph breaks one needs to tick the Regular expressions checkbox under Other options.
After that, my minimal citation style looks like this:
Thank you so much
Legend!
Life saver for a grant deadline. Thank you!!!
Thanks you SO MUCH you just earned me hours of editing
This works great in Paperpile too! Thank you!!
Thank you very much. Your work saved me enormous amounts of time!
HERO! Thank you! I copied the link and it saved to Zotero seamlessly.
Thank you! This is great.
This is a service to the community and I commend you! THANK YOU!!
THANK
This is awesome! Thank you so much!
Hi Mat, you’ll need to adjust the citation style to switch from numbers to author-date mode 😉 Should not be too difficult!
Amazing, great job, thank you so much.
Is it possible to switch citation style from numbers to Author-Date mode.
Best
Mat
Thank you!!!!!
Thanks so much for working on this and posting it. Could you add PMID?
You are amazing, thank you so much! Submitted 3 minutes before the deadline…
Life saver!
God bless you my dude, you just saved me MINUTES of manual editing.
Thank you!!!
Thanks a lot for this contribution! You’re a real time saver!
OMG, this is awesome, thanks so much!
Brilliant, exactly what I needed! Now if only I can remove the reference counter…
I just imported it in my Paperpile: Sattings-> Cittation style.
It’s perferct! Thanks.
(Replying to Jenny) Great! And I learned about SciWheel, had not heard of it before. Thanks!
This worked with SciWheel too. My frazzled grant writing self thanks you
This was very very helpful. Got it working immediately. Thank you!
This is amazing – thank you so much!
Great! It is exactly what I need. Thank you for sharing.
BRILLIANT – Thank you so much. Also works in Papers!
Brilliant. Thanks
Woohoo, thanks for this! Used the Mendeley-friendly link, worked like a charm.
Awesome! Works great.
Excelente! Muchas gracias!
Ah!! You’re a generous genius!
Thanks for this.
B
Thank you so much, that was of great help!
This saved me a lot of work.
Thank you very much
(Replying to Tita) I do not know Paperclip, but I had a quick look on their website and they do accept bibtex… so would this tool help? https://github.com/fiduswriter/biblatex-csl-converter
Thank you so much!!!!
Thank you so much for this! Do you have one for Paperpile?
Fantastic!! Thanks so much for sharing this!!
Thank you so much! This helped me a lot!
(Replying to Gus) Thanks for your feedback. I’ll look into nr 1, because that should work. I’m in doubt if I want to remove initials..
Excellent! Thank you so much!
Very appreciated, thank you very much. Constructive feedback:
1- The journal abbreviations do not work (mostly)
2- You are still included the authors’ initials, which takes a lot of space.
Cheers
This is great, thanks a lot!
Live-saving. Many thanks!
Thank you!
They only accept official citation styles (e.g. from journals/conferences), and arguably there is no such thing as an official minimal one.
Why was your pull request rejected? It seems like a very useful addition.
Thank you so much, you have saved to many a lot of work and time!… 🙂
Thank you! Just copied into Zotero. Worked beautifully!
I love you! Thank you so much! I was brooding over how to fit my reference list onto a poster for a conference, because the very important discussion had not much space left (too much space for results section due to fMRI images).
Thank you so much! This looks great and saves so much space !
Thanks, Daniel, for getting it to work on MS Word.
Thank you SO much! You are the hero the world needs, but doesn’t deserve 🙂
Many thanks for this, it saved loads of space. On MS word in the search and replace put “^p” in the find box and ” ” in the replace box.
Thank you for the details on how to add the style to Zotero!
Thanks so much for this!
For those of you who are using Zotero, you can add the style like this:
(1) Right click on the zotero repository _link_ mentioned at the beginning of the article. Select “Save link as…” and save the CSL file.
(2) In Zotero, go to Edit > Preferences > Cite > Styles. Click the plus button the right of “Get additional styles…” and select the CSL file you downloaded.
After that, you should be able to produce bibliographies in the minimal style.
Thank you so much! Took me a while to figure out how to get it into Zotero, but now that I have, it works beautifully!
Thank you! Fantastico!
antonc: September 3, 2018 at 10:20 am
Thanks, it works!
I’m afraid I cannot say much about server connections that do not work. You could try two alternatives: minimal-grant-proposals.csl on github or minimal-grant-proposals.csl as a gist on github.
When I click on the link, Mendeley says
“Cannot install – http://csl.mendeley.com/styles/20448741/minimal-grant-proposals. Error: Cannot connect to the server”.
How can I solve the problem?
Thank you, very useful!
thank you! this was such a gift on a busy grant submission day.
Hi Veronika,
I never uploaded it to the Zotero repo. I might do so in the (near)future, if I manage to find some time.
best,
Anton
Hi!
Please, what is the name for this minimal citation style in Zotero repository? I cannot find it. https://www.zotero.org/styles
Thanks a lot,
Veronika
You are awesome 🙂
awesome, super helpful!
Thanks man, helped a lot!
That’s great- thank you!
Greatly appreciated! Thank you for sharing.
Got a version for Endnote?!
Thanks for this tip! My frenzied, grant-writing brain appreciates it greatly.