Stylesheet De Buck (e.g. for Zotero)

Update 2026:

Since the major update was published in 2016, the wider CSL community has taken over maintenance of the De Buck stylesheet. I stopped actively contributing in 2016. However, as the stylesheet remains the preferred option for Dutch history journals and most university history courses in the Netherlands, I occasionally receive requests to update it to fix minor errors, add new features (such as those for referencing archival documents) and incorporate the latest standards*.

While it is rewarding to see that the stylesheet is still in active use, I am encouraging others to contribute to its maintenance. Below, I have compiled some starting resources. I also tell colleagues and students that when I started working on the De Buck stylesheet in 2011, I had no prior experience with the CSL language. I relied on the excellent citationstyles.org, its WYSIWYG editor, and the help of members of its community. You don’t need to be an IT expert to contribute.

  • Documentation and instructions can be found on citationstyles.org. Go to the ‘Author’ menu, then select ‘Editing Styles’.
  • Step-by-step guides for editing / maintaining existing stylesheets: Zotero and Github.
  • The code for De Buck is available on Github. Once you have read and understood the above instructions, you can commit changes to the CSL script on GitHub.

*) The original style guide by De Buck is no longer in print, but nowadays superseded by: Jeanette Kamp, Susan Legêne, Matthias van Rossum, Sebas Rümke Geschiedenis schrijven! Wegwijzer voor historici (Amsterdam: AUP 2016); translated as: Writing History! A Companion for Historians (Amsterdam: AUP 2020).


Original post (2016):

Stylesheet for the popular Dutch citation styleguide by P. de Buck e.a., Zoeken en schrijven. Handleiding bij het maken van een historisch werkstuk (9e druk; Baarn 2000). For use in Zotero and other reference managers.

A Dutch version is available from the Zotero website: De Buck (Dutch).
The code is available at Github.
Please mail me for an English version of the csl.

The stylesheet was completely updated in May 2016.