How to cite a thesis in ACS
A master's or doctoral thesis submitted to a university. American Chemical Society. Standard across chemistry journals.
Quick answer
To cite a thesis in ACS, include the author(s), year, title, and container or publisher details. A concrete example is below.
Example
Jumper, J. Deep learning approaches to protein structure prediction. University of Chicago **2017**.
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 thesis, ACS expects these fields at minimum:
- Author
- Year
- Thesis title
- Degree type (PhD, Master's…)
- Institution
- URL or database if online
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