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A Guide to Good Referencing Skills

ACS - American Chemical Society

ACS style uses multiple systems: superscript numbers, numbers within paratheses, or author-year system.

Watch this short video to learn how to cite in ACS style.

 
 
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Basic Rules 

  In-text citation End-of-paper Reference
Basic Rules

  • Superscript numbers.1

    • When citing multiple sources:
      - more than one: 1,3,5
      - three or more: 1-3

  • ​Italic numbers (2).​

    • When citing multiple sources:
      - more than one: (1, 3, 5)
      - three or more: (1-3)

  • Author name and year of publication (Finnegan et al., 2004).​

  • If you used numerical (superscript or italic) in-text citations, put your references in numerical order; If you used author-date in-text citations, order references in alphabetical order by last name of the first author.

  • Use the CASSI tool to look up journal title abbreviations.

  • Journal abbreviation and volume are italicized. Year of publication is bolded.
Examples

  • Superscript numbers

    • as shown by Brown2,

  • Italic numbers

    • as mentioned earlier (2),

  • By author name and year of publication

    • Smith (2003)

    • Brown and Jones (2004),

References

1.  Ager, J.; Shaner, M.; Walczak, K.; Sharp, I.; Ardo, S. Experimental demonstrations of spontaneous, solar-driven photoelectrochemical water splitting. Energy Environ. Sci. 2015, 8, 2811–2824.

2. Osterloh, F. Inorganic Materials as Catalysts for Photochemical Splitting of Water. Chem. Mater. 2008, 20, 35–54

3. Sivula, K.; van de Krol, R. Semiconducting materials for photoelectrochemical energy conversion. Nat. Rev. Mater. 2016, 1, 15010.

Note: If an article has ten or fewer authors, list all of them in your citation. If an article has more than ten authors, list only the first ten, followed by "et al."
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