How to format your references using the ACS Chemical Biology citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for ACS Chemical Biology. 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	Download the output style file
Mendeley, Zotero, Papers, and others	The style is either built in or you can download a CSL file that is supported by most references management programs.
BibTeX	BibTeX syles 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)

Gordon, D. M. The Rewards of Restraint in the Collective Regulation of Foraging by Harvester Ant Colonies. Nature 2013, 498 (7452), 91–93.

A journal article with 2 authors

(1)

Liou, J. C.; Johnson, N. L. Planetary Science. Risks in Space from Orbiting Debris. Science 2006, 311 (5759), 340–341.

A journal article with 3 authors

(1)

Yi, C.; Wei, S.; Hendrey, G. Warming Climate Extends Dryness-Controlled Areas of Terrestrial Carbon Sequestration. Sci. Rep. 2014, 4, 5472.

A journal article with 11 or more authors

(1)

Peñuelas, J.; Farré-Armengol, G.; Llusia, J.; Gargallo-Garriga, A.; Rico, L.; Sardans, J.; Terradas, J.; Filella, I. Removal of Floral Microbiota Reduces Floral Terpene Emissions. Sci. Rep. 2014, 4, 6727.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

(1)

Batten, L. M. Public Key Cryptography; John Wiley & Sons, Inc.: Hoboken, NJ, 2013.

An edited book

(1)

System Simulation and Scientific Computing: International Conference, ICSC 2012, Shanghai, China, October 27-30, 2012. Proceedings, Part II; Xiao, T., Zhang, L., Ma, S., Eds.; Communications in Computer and Information Science; Springer: Berlin, Heidelberg, 2012; Vol. 327.

A chapter in an edited book

(1)

Pamies-Juarez, L.; Oggier, F.; Datta, A. Data Insertion and Archiving in Erasure-Coding Based Large-Scale Storage Systems. In Distributed Computing and Internet Technology: 9th International Conference, ICDCIT 2013, Bhubaneswar, India, February 5-8, 2013. Proceedings; Hota, C., Srimani, P. K., Eds.; Hutchison, D., Kanade, T., Kittler, J., Kleinberg, J. M., Mattern, F., Mitchell, J. C., Naor, M., Nierstrasz, O., Pandu Rangan, C., Steffen, B., Sudan, M., Terzopoulos, D., Tygar, D., Vardi, M. Y., Weikum, G., Series Eds.; Lecture Notes in Computer Science; Springer: Berlin, Heidelberg, 2013; pp 47–68.

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 Chemical Biology.

Blog post

(1)

Hale, T. Watch Japanese High School Students Hatch A Chick Outside Its Egg. IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/watch-japanese-high-school-students-hatch-a-chick-outside-its-egg/ (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. Department of Transportation: Enhancing Policy and Program Effectiveness Through Improved Management; RCED-87-3S; U.S. Government Printing Office: Washington, DC, 1987.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

(1)

Choubey, L. Quantitative Assessment of Fgfr1 Expression in Neurons and Glia of the Developing Mouse Brain. Doctoral dissertation, University of Louisiana, Lafayette, LA, 2015.

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)

Greenhouse, L. Justices Weigh In on Use Of Tapes and Transcripts. New York Times. March 21, 2006, p A15.

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 Chemical Biology
Abbreviation	ACS Chem. Biol.
ISSN (print)	1554-8929
ISSN (online)	1554-8937
Scope	Biochemistry Molecular Medicine General Medicine