How to format your references using the ACS Medicinal Chemistry Letters citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for ACS Medicinal Chemistry Letters. For a complete guide how to prepare your manuscript refer to the journal's instructions to authors.

Using reference management software

Typically you don't format your citations and bibliography by hand. The easiest way is to use a reference manager:

Paperpile	The citation style is built in and you can choose it in Settings > Citation Style or Paperpile > Citation Style in Google Docs.
EndNote	Find the style here: output styles overview
Mendeley, Zotero, Papers, and others	The style is either built in or you can download a CSL file that is supported by most reference managers.
BibTeX	BibTeX styles are usually part of a LaTeX template. Check the instructions to authors if the publisher offers a LaTeX template for this journal.

Journal articles

Those examples are references to articles in scholarly journals and how they are supposed to appear in your bibliography.

Not all journals organize their published articles in volumes and issues, so these fields are optional. Some electronic journals do not provide a page range, but instead list an article identifier. In a case like this it's safe to use the article identifier instead of the page range.

A journal article with 1 author

(1)

Todes, D. Global Darwin: Contempt for Competition. Nature 2009, 462 (7269), 36–37.

A journal article with 2 authors

(1)

Bezemer, T. M.; van der Putten, W. H. Ecology: Diversity and Stability in Plant Communities. Nature 2007, 446 (7135), E6-7; discussion E7-8.

A journal article with 3 authors

(1)

Bode, F.; Sachs, F.; Franz, M. R. Tarantula Peptide Inhibits Atrial Fibrillation. Nature 2001, 409 (6816), 35–36.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

(1)

Tilstra, J. S.; Gaddy, D. F.; Zhao, J.; Davé, S. H.; Niedernhofer, L. J.; Plevy, S. E.; Robbins, P. D. Pharmacologic IKK/NF-κB Inhibition Causes Antigen Presenting Cells to Undergo TNFα Dependent ROS-Mediated Programmed Cell Death. Sci. Rep. 2014, 4, 3631.

Books and book chapters

Here are examples of references for authored and edited books as well as book chapters.

An authored book

(1)

Peinado, A. M.; Segura, J. C. Speech Recognition Over Digital Channels; John Wiley & Sons, Ltd: Chichester, UK, 2006.

An edited book

(1)

Modeling in Systems Biology: The Petri Net Approach; Koch, I., Reisig, W., Schreiber, F., Eds.; Computational Biology; Springer: London, 2011; Vol. 16.

A chapter in an edited book

(1)

Wiederhold, B. K.; Bouchard, S. Fear of Flying (Aviophobia): Efficacy and Methodological Lessons Learned from Outcome Trials. In Advances in Virtual Reality and Anxiety Disorders; Bouchard, S., Ed.; Springer US: Boston, MA, 2014; pp 65–89.

Web sites

Sometimes references to web sites should appear directly in the text rather than in the bibliography. Refer to the Instructions to authors for ACS Medicinal Chemistry Letters.

Blog post

(1)

Davis, J. Shift In Human Ancestors’ Diet Earlier Than Previously Thought. IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/shift-human-ancestors-diet-earlier-previously-thought/ (accessed 2018-10-30)

Reports

This example shows the general structure used for government reports, technical reports, and scientific reports. If you can't locate the report number then it might be better to cite the report as a book. For reports it is usually not individual people that are credited as authors, but a governmental department or agency like "U. S. Food and Drug Administration" or "National Cancer Institute".

Government report

(1)

Government Accountability Office. Surface Transportation: Regional Distribution of Federal Highway Funds; RCED/HEHS-97-167R; U.S. Government Printing Office: Washington, DC, 1997.

Theses and dissertations

Theses including Ph.D. dissertations, Master's theses or Bachelor theses follow the basic format outlined below.

Doctoral dissertation

(1)

Rice, H. J. Before the Storm: Evacuation Intention and Audience Segmentation. Doctoral dissertation, University of South Florida, 2010.

News paper articles

Unlike scholarly journals, news papers do not usually have a volume and issue number. Instead, the full date and page number is required for a correct reference.

New York Times article

(1)

Hodgman, J. Bonus Advice From Judge John Hodgman. New York Times. May 26, 2017, p MM20.

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by sequential numbers in superscript:

This sentence cites one reference ¹.
This sentence cites two references ^1,2.
This sentence cites four references ^1–4.

About the journal

Full journal title	ACS Medicinal Chemistry Letters
Abbreviation	ACS Med. Chem. Lett.
ISSN (online)	1948-5875
Scope