ACS Citation Generator

Enter your source details and get a correctly formatted ACS reference plus the matching superscript in-text number in seconds. Built for the lab reports, literature reviews, theses and manuscripts that follow the ACS Guide to Scholarly Communication — with a live preview that shows the italic journal names, bold years and italic volume numbers, ready to copy straight into your reference list.

Used in: Chemistry, biochemistry, chemical engineering and materials science — ACS is the required style for American Chemical Society journals and for most chemistry coursework and dissertations.

ACS · ACS Guide to Scholarly CommunicationNumeric

The default ACS system — sources are numbered in order of first citation and cited with a superscript number.

Enter your source

Auto-cite from a DOI, ISBN or PubMed ID

Or fill the form yourself below. A bare web address can’t be looked up in the browser — paste its DOI instead.

Source type

A peer-reviewed article in an academic journal.

Author

Digital Object Identifier, if the source has one.

Year published

Add an author or a title and your formatted ACS citation appears here instantly.

In your text

Cite sources with a superscript number in the order they first appear, e.g. “… retrieval cues.¹” Re-use the same number for every later citation of that source.

In your reference list

References are numbered in the order of first citation (not alphabetised). Each entry is labelled “(1)”, “(2)”… Authors are family-first with initials, separated by semicolons; the journal name is italic, the year is bold and the volume is italic.

ACS tips
  • Number references in the order they are first cited and re-use that number on every repeat citation.
  • Separate all authors with a semicolon and list every author — ACS does not use “and”, “&” or “et al.” in the reference list.
  • For a journal article the order is: authors, article title (title case), journal name (italic), bold year, italic volume, then the page range.
  • ACS abbreviates journal names from the CASSI list (e.g. “J. Am. Chem. Soc.”); type the abbreviation if your journal requires it.
  • For an online source, end with the URL or DOI followed by “(accessed YYYY-MM-DD)”.

Your reference list is empty. Build a citation above and choose “Add to list” to collect your sources here, correctly ordered and ready to copy or export.

The ACS system

Two ways to cite, one reference

ACS lets a journal choose between two in-text systems for the very same reference list. The numeric (citation-sequence) system is the default across American Chemical Society journals; a few titles run an author–date variant instead. Here is one journal article cited both ways — note that only the in-text marker changes; the reference list entry stays identical.

One reference-list entryJournal article
Tulving, E.; Thomson, D. M. Encoding Specificity and Retrieval Processes in Episodic Memory. Psychol. Rev. 1973, 80, 352–373.

Numeric (citation-sequence)

ACS default — used by most journals

Each source is numbered in the order it is first cited, and the marker is a small superscript number sitting after the relevant clause.

… encoding context strongly predicts later recall.1

  • Reference list is ordered by first appearance, labelled (1), (2)…
  • Re-use the same number every time you cite that source again.
  • No author or year appears in the running text.
Default for ACS journals

Author–date variant

Used by a minority of titles

The same article is flagged in the text by name and year in italics, and the reference list is alphabetised instead of numbered.

… encoding context strongly predicts later recall (Tulving and Thomson, 1973).

  • Reference list is alphabetical by first author, not numbered.
  • The publication year moves up into the in-text citation.
  • Check your target journal’s author guidelines before choosing.
Journal-specific

The chemistry typography that gives ACS its look

Tulving, E.; Thomson, D. M. Encoding Specificity and Retrieval Processes in Episodic Memory. Psychol. Rev. 1973, 80, 352–373.
Journal — italic

Set the journal name in italics and abbreviate it from the CASSI list, e.g. “Psychol. Rev.”

Year — bold

The publication year is bold and is followed by a comma, never an opening bracket.

Volume — italic

The volume number is italic; the issue is usually omitted when paging is continuous.

Pages — en dash

The first–last page range is plain type, joined by an en dash (–), not a hyphen (-).

In the live tool
The preview above the page renders these conventions for you — italic journal, bold year, italic volume — so the formatting survives intact when you copy the entry into your reference list.
Built part by part

Anatomy of an ACS journal article

Read end to end, these seven segments reconstruct the reference exactly. Each part carries its own punctuation rule — get the dividers right and the entry falls into place.

1
Author(s)
Tulving, E.; Thomson, D. M.

Family name first, then spaced initials with full stops. Authors are separated by semicolons, with no “and” or “&” before the last.

2
Article title
Encoding Specificity and Retrieval Processes in Episodic Memory.

Title case, ending in a full stop. The article title is set in plain (roman) type.

3
Journal name
Psychological Review

The journal name is italicised. ACS normally abbreviates it from the CASSI list (e.g. “Psychol. Rev.”).

4
Year
1973,

The publication year is bold and is followed by a comma.

5
Volume
80,

The volume number is italic and is followed by a comma.

6
Page range
352–373.

The first–last page range, in plain type, closed by a full stop.

7
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1037/h0020071.

The DOI is given as a full https://doi.org/ link, with a closing full stop at the very end of the entry.

Which edition this follows
This generator follows the ACS Guide to Scholarly Communication, the current style manual of the American Chemical Society. ACS is a numeric (citation-sequence) system: sources are numbered in the order they first appear, the in-text marker is a superscript number and the reference-list entry is labelled “(1)”. Its distinctive look comes from the journal reference — an italic journal name, a bold year and an italic volume — and from CASSI journal abbreviations, which this tool does not look up, so type the abbreviated journal name yourself if your target journal requires it.
Every source type

ACS templates, side by side with a worked example

The skeleton shows you the order and dividers; the filled example shows what a finished entry looks like. Different source types swap publisher details for a DOI, an access date or a page range — but the author block stays the same throughout.

Journal article

Template
Author. Article Title. Journal **Year**, Volume, Pages. DOI.
Example
Tulving, E.; Thomson, D. M. Encoding Specificity and Retrieval Processes in Episodic Memory. Psychological Review 1973, 80, 352–373. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0020071.

Book

Template
Author. Title, Edition; Publisher: Place, Year.
Example
Kuhn, T. S. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 3rd ed.; University of Chicago Press: Chicago, IL, 1996.

Book chapter

Template
Author. Chapter Title. In Book Title, Edition; Editor, Ed.; Publisher: Place, Year; pp xx–xx.
Example
McGann, J. J. The Rationale of Hypertext. In Electronic Text: Investigations in Method and Theory; Greetham, D. C., Ed.; Oxford University Press: Oxford, 1997; pp 19–46.

Website

Template
Author. Page Title. Site Name. URL (accessed YYYY-MM-DD).
Example
Cherry, K. How Human Memory Works. Verywell Mind. https://www.verywellmind.com/how-memory-works-2795000 (accessed 2024-01-15).

Newspaper article

Template
Author. Article Title. Newspaper, Month Day, Year. URL.
Example
Carrington, D. World Leaders Strike Landmark Climate Deal at COP26. The Guardian, November 13, 2021. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/nov/13/cop26-climate-deal.

Online video

Template
Author/Channel. Video Title. Platform. URL.
Example
Veritasium. The Science of Thermodynamics. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xb-zVtJf9Hk.

Conference paper

Template
Author. Paper Title. In Proceedings, Place, Year; pp xx–xx.
Example
Vaswani, A.; Shazeer, N. Attention Is All You Need. In Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems, Long Beach, CA, 2017; pp 5998–6008.

Thesis / dissertation

Template
Author. Title. Type, Institution, Place, Year. URL.
Example
Doe, J. A. Essays on Monetary Policy and Inflation Expectations. Doctoral dissertation, University of Oxford, 2019. https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:example.

Report

Template
Author/Organisation. Title; Report No.; Publisher: Place, Year. URL.
Example
World Health Organization. World Health Statistics 2023: Monitoring Health for the SDGs; No. 24; World Health Organization: Geneva, Switzerland, 2023. https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/9789240074323.
The author block

How ACS handles authors

The author block is the part students get wrong most often, because ACS does almost the opposite of the author–date styles: semicolons instead of commas, no “and”, and every author listed in full.

The shape of one name

Tulving, E.; Thomson, D. M.
  • 1.Family name first, followed by a comma.
  • 2.Spaced initials, each closed by a full stop: D. M.
  • 3.A semicolon separates one author from the next.
No “and”, “&” or “et al.”
ACS uses no conjunction before the final author and does not truncate the list with et al. in the reference list. A ten-author paper lists all ten — semicolon-separated.
No personal author?
Start the entry with the responsible organisation (for a report or website) or with the title of the work. The number still comes from the order in which you first cite it.

Titles & capitalisation

  • Use title case for article, chapter, book, website, thesis and report titles.
  • Italicise the journal name, the book title and the conference-proceedings title.
  • ACS normally abbreviates journal names from the CASSI list (e.g. “J. Am. Chem. Soc.”); type the abbreviation if your journal requires it.

Numbering & dates

  • Number sources in the order they are first cited and re-use each number on every repeat citation.
  • The in-text marker is a superscript number; the reference-list label is the same number as “(1)”.
  • In a journal reference the year is bold and the volume is italic: “… 1973, 80, …”.
  • For online sources, give the access date in ISO order as “(accessed YYYY-MM-DD)”.

DOIs & URLs

  • Prefer a DOI, given as a full https://doi.org/ link.
  • When there is no DOI, give the stable URL of the source.
  • A DOI or URL is closed by a full stop at the end of the entry; a web source adds the access date before that full stop.
Marked against the manual

Common ACS slip-ups, side by side

Most reference-list errors are punctuation, not content. Each pair below shows the form that trips students up, the version the ACS Guide expects, and the reason the change matters.

Avoid
Tulving, E., and Thomson, D. M.
ACS form
Tulving, E.; Thomson, D. M.

ACS separates authors with a semicolon and uses no “and” or “&” before the final author.

Avoid
Tulving, E.; Thomson, D. M.; et al.
ACS form
Tulving, E.; Thomson, D. M.

ACS lists every author in the reference; it does not truncate with “et al.” in the reference list.

Avoid
Tulving E; Thomson D M.
ACS form
Tulving, E.; Thomson, D. M.

Put a comma after each surname and a full stop after each initial, with a space between initials.

Avoid
Encoding specificity and retrieval processes in episodic memory.
ACS form
Encoding Specificity and Retrieval Processes in Episodic Memory.

ACS article titles take title case, not sentence case.

Avoid
Psychological Review, 1973, 80, 352–373.
ACS form
Psychological Review 1973, 80, 352–373.

There is no comma between the italic journal name and the bold year — the comma comes after the year.

Avoid
https://doi.org/10.1037/h0020071
ACS form
https://doi.org/10.1037/h0020071.

The DOI ends the entry, so it is closed by a full stop in an ACS reference list.

Put it together

A sample ACS reference list

Notice the order: entries follow the sequence in which the sources were first cited, not the alphabet. The (1)…(4) labels match the superscript numbers you would place in the text.

  1. 1Tulving, E.; Thomson, D. M. Encoding Specificity and Retrieval Processes in Episodic Memory. Psychological Review 1973, 80, 352–373. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0020071.
  2. 2Kuhn, T. S. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 3rd ed.; University of Chicago Press: Chicago, IL, 1996.
  3. 3Cherry, K. How Human Memory Works. Verywell Mind. https://www.verywellmind.com/how-memory-works-2795000 (accessed 2024-01-15).
  4. 4Vaswani, A.; Shazeer, N. Attention Is All You Need. In Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems, Long Beach, CA, 2017; pp 5998–6008.
Matching the in-text numbers
Each entry’s number is the superscript you place in the running text the first time that source appears — and every time after. Keep the list and the superscripts in step and your numbering will always reconcile.

ACS Citation Generator — questions

How does the ACS numbering system work?+

ACS is a numeric (citation-sequence) style. You number each source in the order it is first cited in your text and re-use that same number every time you cite the source again. The reference list is therefore ordered by first appearance, not alphabetically, and each entry is labelled “(1)”, “(2)”, and so on.

What does an in-text citation look like in ACS?+

The in-text marker is a superscript number placed where the source is cited, for example “… as shown by recent kinetics data.²” ACS also permits italic numbers in parentheses or numbers on the line, but the superscript form is the most common. You do not give the author or year in the running text.

How are authors formatted in an ACS reference?+

Authors are listed family-name first with initials, in the form “Tulving, E.; Thomson, D. M.” Names are separated by semicolons, and ACS uses no “and”, “&” or “et al.” in the reference list — every author is listed in full.

Should I abbreviate the journal name?+

Yes. ACS journals use the standard CASSI (Chemical Abstracts Service Source Index) abbreviations, such as “J. Am. Chem. Soc.” for the Journal of the American Chemical Society. This generator cannot look abbreviations up for you, so type the abbreviated journal name directly into the journal field if your target journal requires it; otherwise the full name you enter is used as-is.

Why are the year and volume styled differently from the page numbers?+

In an ACS journal reference the publication year is bold and the volume number is italic, while the journal name is italic and the page range is plain — for example, “Psychological Review 1973, 80, 352–373.” The live preview shows this formatting; when you copy into Word the italics and bold are preserved.

How do I cite a website or other online source in ACS?+

Give the author or organisation, the page title, the website name, then the URL (or DOI) followed by an access date in the form “(accessed YYYY-MM-DD)”. For example: “Cherry, K. How Human Memory Works. Verywell Mind. https://www.verywellmind.com/… (accessed 2024-01-15).”

How do I handle a source with no author in ACS?+

When there is no personal author, start the reference with the organisation responsible (for a report or a website) or with the title of the work. The entry still takes its number from the order in which you first cite it, exactly like any other source.

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