How to format your references using the ACS Photonics citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for ACS Photonics. 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)

Ball, P. Chemistry: Why Synthesize? Nature 2015, 528 (7582), 327–329.

A journal article with 2 authors

(1)

Ratajczak, Z.; Nippert, J. B. Comment on “Global Resilience of Tropical Forest and Savanna to Critical Transitions.” Science 2012, 336 (6081), 541; author reply 541.

A journal article with 3 authors

(1)

Gruber, N.; Keeling, C. D.; Bates, N. R. Interannual Variability in the North Atlantic Ocean Carbon Sink. Science 2002, 298 (5602), 2374–2378.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

(1)

Astle, A. T.; Li, R. W.; Webb, B. S.; Levi, D. M.; McGraw, P. V. A Weber-like Law for Perceptual Learning. Sci. Rep. 2013, 3, 1158.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

(1)

Kirchner, T. Merger Arbitrage; John Wiley & Sons, Inc: Hoboken, NJ, 2016.

An edited book

(1)

Chemistry for Sustainable Development in Africa; Gurib-Fakim, A., Eloff, J. N., Eds.; Springer: Berlin, Heidelberg, 2013.

A chapter in an edited book

(1)

Boley, H. PSOA RuleML: Integrated Object-Relational Data and Rules. In Reasoning Web. Web Logic Rules: 11th International Summer School 2015, Berlin, Germany, July 31- August 4, 2015, Tutorial Lectures; Faber, W., Paschke, A., Eds.; Lecture Notes in Computer Science; Springer International Publishing: Cham, 2015; pp 114–150.

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 Photonics.

Blog post

(1)

Luntz, S. Protective Coating Could Revolutionize Waterproofing. IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/chemistry/protective-coating-could-revolutionize-waterproofing/ (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. Need for Disclosing Items Developed in Programs Funded Under Federal Grants; 093038; U.S. Government Printing Office: Washington, DC, 1971.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

(1)

Michaels, J. L. Changing Cooperation to Competition Disrupts Attitudes and Valence: First Test of a Dynamical Model. Doctoral dissertation, Florida Atlantic University, 2009.

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)

Barron, J. Allegories of 2 Boroughs Prepare for a Homecoming. New York Times. December 21, 2016, p A22.

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 Photonics
Abbreviation	ACS Photonics
ISSN (online)	2330-4022
Scope