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Swindell - March 2023

Citation Help

For this class, you will be following the citation style used by JACS (Journal of the American Chemical Society).

According to pages 4, 6, and 7 of the "Author Guidelines" for this journal, you should consult The ACS Style Guide, 3rd edition and be sure to include article titles and use journal abbreviations as listed in Chemical Abstracts Service Source Index (CASSI).

  • As you gather your sources, compile your References section. Complete this section before you begin writing your paper! Why?
    • This will ensure that you have copied down all the necessary citation components of your book, article, Web site, etc.
    • It will make your life much easier when you need to do in-text citations since authors and dates are already neatly organized on your reference page.
    • It decreases the chance that you'll include an in-text citation for a source, but then forget to include it within the reference section.
      • Note: There's no need to worry about this if you use EndNote's Cite-While-You-Write plug-in.
  • You will be following the JACS (Journal of the American Chemical Society) format:
    • The order of your references section is NOT alphabetical; rather, the list should be in order of appearance in your paper
    • Since you do not list the same source twice in your references section, you ARE expected to repeat superscripts within your paper
    • To see an example, visit: https://pubs-acs-org.proxy.libraries.rutgers.edu/doi/pdf/10.1021/jacs.1c11083
    • Please note that you are expected to include the page range of the article for this class, but not the issue number
  • Citation management tools can be a great help with citations: