ACS (American Chemical Society): Citing Your Sources

Formatting and Ordering the Reference List

For more information see: The ACS Style Guide, Part 4, section 3.2.

The reference list provides the full details on the sources you cited in the body your paper. The heading for this section is "References". 

General Guidelines

• Start a new page for the references list.
• Center or left-justify the word References on the page.
• Use a hanging indent to correctly format your references list: indent all lines in a reference entry except for the first line.

• Each entry should include the following reference components:

  • Author or editor

  • Publication Date

  • Publication information (Article or Chapter Title, Journal or Book title, etc.)

Ordering the References List

• If you used numerical (parenthetical or superscript) 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. Keep in mind that "nothing precedes something."

  Brown, L.
  Brownfield, G.
  Browning, R.

See the examples in the left navigation for the required elements for each type of source. Continue reading below for details on formatting each reference component and ordering the reference list.

Please note that the journal Biochemistry is an exception to many of these formatting rules. Ask a librarian for assistance in formatting reference lists for this journal.