Preparing an article for submission & the guidelines basically say: "Submit it in any format with any referencing style you like, as long as it's consistent'. If accepted, we'll then apply the journal reference style". PLEASE can we normalise this display of common sense! 👏

NAME THE PUBLICATION! They need all the praise they can get!

Even if they said "If accepted, YOU'LL have to apply the journal reference style", that would still be a far more sensible system...

I work at a journal in which we simply do not unify referencing styles. We suggest using ours but, as long as what you used is consistent or one of the usual referencing a systems in the field, we let it be. Very useful when your authors fight over author-date or footnote referencing.