Paste a DOI, ISBN, URL or title
Need an ACS citation? Our free ACS citation generator builds accurate American Chemical Society references in seconds. Paste a DOI, URL, or ISBN, or enter the details manually, and get a properly formatted ACS reference ready to copy.
ACS style comes from the ACS Guide to Scholarly Communication and is the standard across chemistry — in coursework, in ACS journals such as JACS, and in most chemistry theses. It has one feature no other style on this site shares: three different in-text systems, all of them correct.
ACS lets you cite in the text three ways, and your journal or instructor picks which: a superscript number¹, an italic number in parentheses (1), or author–date (Smith, 2023). The first two are numbered systems, so the reference list is ordered by first appearance in the text; the author–date option alphabetizes instead.
Whichever you choose, the reference entry itself is identical. CiteCreate outputs the numbered form, so the number in the generated entry corresponds to its position in your list — and if your instructor wants superscripts, apply the superscript formatting in your word processor to the in-text number, which is a formatting step no generator can do inside plain text.
The author list is the ACS signature: surname first, then initials, with authors separated by semicolons. The article title is in title case, the abbreviated journal name is italicized, and the year is bold, followed by the italic volume, the issue in parentheses, and the page range.
Example
(1) Smith, J. A. The Role of Machine Learning in Academic Writing. Journal of Educational Technology 2023, 41 (3), 215–232. https://doi.org/10.1234/jet.2023.0041.
In-text: 1
A book entry italicizes the title, gives the edition, and separates the publisher from the title with a semicolon. When you are citing a specific page, ACS writes it as p 45 or pp 45–47 — with no full stop after the p.
Example
(1) Smith, J. A. The Craft of Research, 4th ed.; University of Chicago Press, 2020.
In-text: 1
ACS abbreviates journal titles using CASSI, the Chemical Abstracts Service Source Index, which is free to search. Journal of the American Chemical Society becomes J. Am. Chem. Soc.; a one-word title such as Science is not abbreviated at all. Guessing an abbreviation is the fastest way to a wrong ACS reference — look it up.
How many authors to name before et al. depends on where you are submitting: ACS journals set this in their own author guidelines, and some ask for the complete list however long it is. Follow the target journal, and for coursework name everyone unless your instructor says otherwise.
ACS punctuation is unusually dense, and these are the slips that show up most often in submitted work.
Whichever your journal or instructor specifies. Superscript numbers are the most common choice in ACS journals; the italic-number and author–date options are equally valid ACS, but you must use one system consistently throughout.
Apply superscript formatting in your word processor to the number itself. CiteCreate outputs plain text so the citation can be pasted anywhere, and superscripting is a one-keystroke formatting step in Word or Google Docs.
Search CASSI, the free Chemical Abstracts Service Source Index. It gives the official ACS abbreviation for any indexed journal, and single-word titles like Science stay unabbreviated.
Only if you use the author–date system. With superscript or italic numbers, entries are listed in the order they are first cited in the text.
Yes. ACS references, BibTeX, and RIS export are free with no account required.