How to cite a book in ACS
A printed or electronic book with one or more authors. American Chemical Society. Standard across chemistry journals.
Quick answer
To cite a book in ACS, include the author(s), year, title, and container or publisher details. A concrete example is below.
Example
Kahneman, D. Thinking, Fast and Slow. Farrar, Straus and Giroux **2011**.
This example is rendered with the official CSL definition for ACS. For the exact style required by your journal, paste your references into DEEPNOTIS and pick that style from the dropdown — the app covers 2,800+ variants.
What you need
For a book, ACS expects these fields at minimum:
- Author(s)
- Year of publication
- Book title (italicized in most styles)
- Publisher
- Place of publication (some styles)
- ISBN (optional but recommended)
Common mistakes
- Mixing bibliography formatting with in-text citation rules. Reference-list entries and in-text cites follow different patterns — use the style's official guide for both.
- Forgetting the DOI. When a DOI exists, most styles now require it (usually as a full https://doi.org/… URL).
- Inconsistent capitalization. APA uses sentence case for titles; MLA and Chicago use title case. Mixing them is the single most common style error.
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Last updated: 5 May 2026