Frequently Asked Questions

ACS (American Chemical Society) citation style is a set of guidelines for writing and citing sources in chemistry and related sciences. It is defined in the ACS Style Guide and specifies how to list authors, format years (bold in journal citations), italicize volume numbers, and use DOIs.

No. ACS and APA are different citation styles. ACS is used in chemistry and related sciences; APA is used in social sciences and psychology. Key differences include author name format, year placement, and the use of bold/italic formatting.

The ACS Style Guide requires the publication year to be typeset in bold in journal article references. This is a distinctive feature of ACS style that helps readers quickly identify the publication date.

According to the ACS Style Guide, the volume number in journal article references should be italicized. This is a formatting convention that distinguishes the volume from the issue number and page range.

The ACS Style Guide recommends using a DOI whenever one is available, as DOIs are permanent identifiers. URLs should only be used when no DOI exists. The DOI should be formatted as a full https://doi.org/ link.

In ACS style, list all authors. Author names are written in inverted form (Last name, First initial. Middle initial.) and separated by semicolons. For example: Smith, J. A.; Jones, B. C.; Williams, R. T.

Yes, completely free. No account, no registration, and no payment required. You can generate and copy as many ACS citations as you need.

No. The tool works entirely without signing up or logging in. Your bibliography is saved in your browser's local storage.

The generator supports: DOI (e.g. 10.1021/jacs.0c01234), ISBN-10 and ISBN-13 (e.g. 978-0-12-345678-9), URLs (for websites), and arXiv IDs (e.g. 2401.12345). For other sources, you can enter details manually.

If the automatic lookup cannot find metadata for your identifier, the form will open pre-filled with whatever was found. You can manually fill in or correct any missing fields before generating your citation.

After generating a citation, click 'Add to Bibliography'. Your citations are saved in a bibliography panel at the top of the page. You can copy all citations at once or download them as a .txt file.

Yes. After adding citations to your bibliography, you can copy all entries to your clipboard or download them as a plain text (.txt) file with each reference numbered.

If no author is listed, begin the citation with the article title. If it is an anonymous work, you may use 'Anon.' in place of the author name.

For articles published only online, include [Online] after the journal name if applicable, and add the DOI or URL followed by the access date in parentheses.

Format: Author(s). Title. ChemRxiv/arXiv Year. DOI. Example: Li, M.; Wang, X. Machine Learning in Drug Discovery. ChemRxiv 2025. https://doi.org/10.26434/chemrxiv-2025-xxxxx.

Format: Author. Title. Degree Type, Institution, Year. Example: Zhang, L. Development of Electrochemical Biosensors. Ph.D. Dissertation, MIT, 2023.

If there is no author, begin with the organization or website name. Format: Organization. Page Title. URL (accessed Month Day, Year). Example: American Chemical Society. ACS Publications Home Page. https://pubs.acs.org/ (accessed June 29, 2026).

Format: Author(s). Chapter Title. In Book Title, Edition; Editor(s), Eds.; Publisher: City, Year; pp Pages. Example: Karol, P. J. The Periodic Table. In Elements Old and New; Benvenuto, M. A., Ed.; American Chemical Society, 2017; pp 41–6.

[Online] is a tag used in older ACS citation formats for articles accessed electronically. The current ACS Style Guide (2026) generally omits this tag and simply includes the DOI or URL directly.

Previously, ACS style required CASSI (Chemical Abstracts Service Source Index) abbreviations for journal titles. The current ACS Style Guide allows full journal names. However, abbreviated names are still widely accepted and preferred in most ACS journals.

This can occasionally happen if CrossRef's metadata is incomplete or if the DOI resolves to a different version. Use the manual entry form to correct any incorrect fields before generating your citation.

Not all books are indexed in Open Library. If the lookup fails, use manual entry to fill in the book details directly.

Compare your citation against the ACS Style Guide or our format examples in the ACS Style Guide section. The most common issues are missing bold year, missing italic volume, and incorrect author name format.

Yes. Select the closest available source type and use the Manual Entry option to fill in all fields manually. You can then generate a citation and edit the output as needed.