We currently use the CSL 1.0 (citation style language) specification for the citation styles we use in Mendeley Desktop. The format specifications and some instructions on how to modify, or create your own citation styles can be found here.

A repository of currently available styles can also be found here.

The citation style files used by Mendeley Desktop are located in the citationStyles-1.0 sub-directory of the folder where Mendeley Desktop is installed. Adding new formatted .csl citation style files, or modifying existing ones will make them available in Mendeley Desktop.

Having said that, we realise that modifying or creating citation styles is currently quite difficult and unintuitive.

With this in mind, currently developing an alternative citation style editor, which will hopefully allow more users to create and fine-tune various citation styles to their specific needs. Unfortunately we can't give an estimate on when we will manage to do this yet, however it definitely is on our roadmap.