Chemistry and Chemical Engineering: Citations + Writing

Citation management software helps you to collect and organize papers, cite sources, and create bibliographies in a variety of citation styles.

Popular citation management tools in the sciences and engineering include:

• Zotero is a free and easy-to-use tool for collecting, managing, and citing the sources you find during your research. It can be integrated with Google Docs, Overleaf, and Word for easily formatting citations while writing.
  • ​Zotero guide
• Mendeley is a freely available reference manager and academic social network that can be used to organize your research, create bibliographies, collaborate with others, and discover current developments. It can be integrated with Overleaf and Word for easily formatting citations while writing.
  • Mendeley guide
• BibTeX is a tool and format for simply organizing citations in a .bib text file. It can be used in LaTeX to format citations and bibliographies in a variety of styles. Overleaf offers extensive guidance on how to use .bib files with bibtex and biblatex, a newer package that is actively being developed.
  • JabRef is a free tool for more effectively organizing and viewing your .bib libraries and formatting references and bibliographies.
• EndNote is bibliographic management software that you install on your computer. It offers sophisticated, flexible tools for organizing references and creating bibliographies. EndNote works with Word to format citations and create bibliographies in a comprehensive variety of styles. Get the student price by purchasing online with proof of student status.
  • EndNote guide
• Papers is low-cost software that allows you to search, retrieve, organize, and annotate article PDFs. It can be integrated with Google Docs and Word for easily formatting citations.
• Paperpile is a low-cost web tool for collecting and organizing papers and easily formatting citations and bibliographies in Google Docs.

The third edition of The ACS Style Guide: Effective Communication of Scientific Information (2006) covers scientific writing and formatting guidelines, including citation formats.

For a more thorough discussion of citation formats, please refer to Chapter 14: References in The ACS Style Guide.

Use the CASSI Search Tool to identify journal title abbreviations. See the guide below for citation examples:

Are you looking to improve your technical and scientific communication skills in English? These resources may help:

• IEEE English for Technical Professionals - interactive online course to advance technical communications skills
• Oxford Dictionaries - bilingual dictionaries including English to Chinese, French, German, Italian, Russian and Spanish
• Science research writing for non-native speakers of English (ebook) / Hilary Glasman-Deal - World Scientific Press
• Making sense : a student's guide to research and writing: engineering and the technical sciences (print) / Margot Northey and Judi Jewinski - Oxford University Press
• Scientific writing in a second language (print) / David Ian Hanauer and Karen Englander - Parlor Press
• Toward speaking excellence: the Michigan guide to maximizing your performance on the TSE test and other speaking tests (print) / Dean Papajohn - University of Michigan Press
• Writing science in plain English (print) / Anne E. Greene - University of Chicago Press