ACS citation generator

Stress-free and accurate citations with the BibGuru ACS citation generator

Getting citations and reference lists done correctly can be very confusing and time-consuming. That's why we developed BibGuru—to let you concentrate on your writing instead of stressing over how to format your references properly. We believe students shouldn't have to spend hours manually entering information or risk losing points due to citation errors.

BibGuru is a quick and easy-to-use ACS citation generator built with students in mind. Its efficient search tool lets you find books, websites, and journal articles and instantly add them to your bibliography. Start citing now:

What is the ACS citation style?

The ACS style was developed by the American Chemical Society for academic writing in chemistry. The standards of the ACS style can be found in the ACS Style Guide: Effective Communication of Scientific Information, 3rd ed. (2006), edited by Anne M. Coghill and Lorrin R. Garson, and ACS Style Guide: A Manual for Authors and Editors (1997).

The ACS style uses both numbered and author-date systems. Read below how to create citations in ACS or use BibGuru's free citation generator above to get started immediately if you have no prior knowledge of the citation style necessary.

How do I cite in ACS style?

In the ACS style, you can cite references in three ways:

1. By superscript numbers, which appear outside the punctuation if the citation applies to a whole sentence or clause.
2. By italic numbers in parentheses on the line of text and inside the punctuation.
3. By author name and year of publication in parentheses inside the punctuation (known as author-date).

The author's name can be part of the sentence in all three systems. In such a case, only the year is placed in parentheses in the author-date system. Here is an example:

With numerical reference citations, start with 1 and number consecutively throughout the paper, including references in text and tables, figures, and other non-text components. If a reference is cited more than once, it does not receive a new number. When citing more than one reference at a time, include reference numbers in increasing order separated by commas.

Whenever authors are named, and a reference has two authors, give both names joined by the word "and". If a reference has more than two authors, give only the first name, followed by "et al." Do not use a comma before et al.; always use a period after al.

How do I create a reference list in ACS?

The reference list appears at the end of the paper in numerical order if cited by number or in alphabetical order if cited by author-date. A reference list must include certain minimum data:

• Journal references must include author names, abbreviated journal title, year of publication, volume number, and initial page of cited article (the complete span is better)
• Book references must include author or editor names, book title, publisher, city of publication, year of publication
• For material other than books and journals, sufficient information must be provided so that the source can be identified and located

In lists, references always end with a period. Use only the initials of the authors' given names, and use full stops and spaces between the initials. Last name comes first. Include all author names in a reference citation. With multiple authors, separate the names from one another by semicolons.

An example of a citation and reference list entry in ACS:

While all the specific rules of the ACS citation style might sound very complicated, you don't need to worry about getting them wrong with BibGuru. Use our ACS citation generator above to create the fastest and most accurate ACS citations possible.

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