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 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)

Wigzell, H. Science & Politics: When Ministers Are Well Primed. Nature 2007, 449 (7163), 663.

A journal article with 2 authors

(1)

Stroebel, D.; Paoletti, P. Neuroscience: A Structure to Remember. Nature 2014, 511 (7508), 162–163.

A journal article with 3 authors

(1)

Melchor, R. N.; De Valais, S.; Genise, J. F. Bird-like Fossil Footprints from the Late Triassic. Nature 2002, 417 (6892), 936–938.

A journal article with 11 or more authors

(1)

Ajelli, M.; Poletti, P.; Melegaro, A.; Merler, S. The Role of Different Social Contexts in Shaping Influenza Transmission during the 2009 Pandemic. Sci. Rep. 2014, 4, 7218.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

(1)

Lu, J.; Zhao, X.; Yamada, S. Harmonic Balance Finite Element Method; John Wiley & Sons Singapore Pte. Ltd: Singapore, 2016.

An edited book

(1)

Borghese, F. Scattering from Model Nonspherical Particles: Theory and Applications to Environmental Physics; Denti, P., Saija, R., Eds.; Physics of Earth and Space Environments; Springer: Berlin, Heidelberg, 2007.

A chapter in an edited book

(1)

Finn, A.; Scheding, S. UVS Technology Issues. In Developments and Challenges for Autonomous Unmanned Vehicles: A Compendium; Scheding, S., Ed.; Kacprzyk, J., Jain, L. C., Series Eds.; Intelligent Systems Reference Library; Springer: Berlin, Heidelberg, 2010; pp 55–103.

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)

Andrew, D. Brain Training – Why It’s No Walk In The Park. IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/brain-training-why-its-no-walk-in-the-park/ (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. Business Systems Modernization: DOD Needs to Fully Define Policies and Procedures for Institutionally Managing Investments; GAO-07-538; U.S. Government Printing Office: Washington, DC, 2007.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

(1)

Anderson, M. S. Integrating Emergency Medical Services Into the Patient-Centered Medical Home. Doctoral dissertation, Capella University, Minneapolis, MN, 2017.

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)

Sisario, B. ‘Hamilton Mixtape’ No. 1 on Chart. New York Times. December 12, 2016, p C3.

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