The format of writing the References /Literature cited varies from journals to journals. I feel that your assertion is correct. If there would have been a universal pattern of literature citation much time could have been saved.

The format of writing the References /Literature cited varies from journals to journals. I feel that your assertion is correct. If there would have been a universal pattern of literature citation much time could have been saved.

Journals have different bibliography/referencing systems. This might probably be as a result of preventing authors from easily sending one paper to different journals at a time. The diversities in referencing sucks time especially in situations where you have to resend the same paper to another journal.

A uniform referencing system is logical. But different journals follow different styles. Whose style should be taken? Why other journals will agree in it?

Some international law may create pressure to follow single reference system. But how such law can be formed?

WHO WILL BELL THE CAT?

Agree that there should be a uniform format but we must analyse pros and cons before implementation

Yes I also agree with your opinion. The writing pattern of bibliography and references should be universal.

but there are systems, which help you re-format your references

Each journal will have a style for citation and writing references. There are four popular citation and listing system in journals.

In the footnote method, citations on a page in the text will be indicated by continuous numbers (usually as superscripts); and at the bottom of each page, references are given as footnotes.

In the citation-sequence system (C-S system), also called the Vancouver style, each reference is given a number according to the order in which it first appears in the text. The citation in the text is indicated by a number, often set as superscript as1 or a number in parentheses as (1).

The citation-name system (C-N system) or the alpha-numeric method is an improvement over the citation-sequence system. Here, references are alphabetically arranged at the end of the book or article by authors’ names and numbered consecutively. These numbers are then noted at the appropriate positions in the text.

In the name-year system (N-Y system), also called the Harvard system or the Author-Date system, citation of sources in the text is indicated by the surname or last name of the author/s (without initials) followed by the year of publication. Because of its simplicity, most journals in agriculture and life sciences follow this style.

The CSE (the Council of Science Editors) recommends CSE style for all scientific disciplines. The CSE Manual (CSE, 2006) recommends three methods for citing and documenting sources: (1) the Name-Year (N-Y) system, (2) the Citation-Sequence (C-S) system, and (3) the Citation-Name(C-N) system. In India, we mainly follow N-Y system, but most of the American literature follows C-S or C-N system. If you know how to write the sources in N-Y style, it is easy to change them to other styles.

Although the Council of Science Editors Manual recommends three methods for citing references, namely, the Name-Year (N-Y) system, the Citation-Sequence (C-S) system and the Citation-Name (C-N) system, the N-Y system is the most popular one. A major advantage of the system is that manual citation and listing are easy. In the USA and certain European countries, they follow C-S or C-N system, where they number the citations. However, in these cases, as additions and deletions demand renumbering, manual reference management become cumbersome for the authors. In these cases, it would be a good idea to go for reference management software.

At present, several software packages are available for reference management, either priced or freely downloadable from Internet sources. For example, Mendeley is a free software from Elsevier. EndNote is a popular commercial software from Clarivate Analytics (previously by Thomson Reuters). Prominent priced software packages include:

Endnote (https://www.endnote.com/)

Papers (http://www.readcube.com/papers/)

Bookends (www. sonnysoftware.com/ )

SciRef (http://sci-progs.com/)

Citavi (https://citavi.com/)

Most commercial software packages provide trial versions for free. However, note that these software packages go for revisions at regular intervals, and each time you have to shell out some money for an upgraded version!

You can also try free software packages for reference management. Some of these perform excellently well on par or a bit better than commercial packages. Popular among them include:

Mendeley (https://www.mendeley.com)

Zotero (https://www.zotero.org/)

JabRef (http://jabref.sourceforge.net/)

RefWorks (https://www.proquest.com/)

CiteULike (http://www.citeulike.org),

Bibus (http://www.sourceforage.net/projects/bibus-biblio)

Refbase (http://www.refbase.net)

BibSonomy (https://www.bibsonomy.org/), and

Qiqqa (http://www.qiqqa.com/)

Wikindx (https://sourceforge.net/ projects/wikindx/)

A warning! Whether you use reference management software or intend to do it manually, you should first try to have a clear idea about various documentation styles and their rules of citation and listing!

Great information Dr. George Thomas

Can not every journal make a program for their own rules? If this can be done, it will be a great convenience for writers.

I agree with all and along with this, we have to understand the two terminologies Similarity index and Plagiarism (https://www.researchgate.net/post/What_is_the_difference_between_the_similarity_index_and_the_plagiarism). If the respective authorities able to differentiate these two, it is more enough. Most of them consider, references as a part of plagiarism. Please find the attachment just for awareness, so you will come to know the issue.

@Rahul, please re-check, in the iThenticate "Match ovewiev" window, upper-right cornet, it is written "Quotes excluded" and "Bibliography excluded" - or vice versa; but you may choose these options before you test text for similarity.

here is an example

Hi.

It's curious to see that not always the names of the journals and titles of books appear in italics in the bibliography of articles, book chapters, etc. Another question is the volume, in some journals cited in bold and in others without it...

Best regards.