BibTeX to ACS Citation Converter

Convert BibTeX entries to ACS style references in seconds. Paste any @article or @book entry and copy a clean ACS citation. Free, no sign-up.

Paste a BibTeX entry to get the ACS citation

What is BibTeX?

BibTeX is the reference format used by LaTeX and by reference managers such as Zotero, JabRef, and Mendeley. Each entry starts with an @ sign and a type – @article, @book, @inproceedings – followed by a citation key and a set of field–value pairs for authors, title, journal, year, and pages. BibTeX stores the raw data of a reference rather than a formatted citation, which makes it ideal input for conversion: every field is already labeled, so nothing has to be guessed from punctuation. Paste one or more entries into CiteTools and the parser reads the fields directly. The citation is built from the fields in your entry, as you wrote them, and is marked As written. The output is a finished citation you can paste into a paper written in Word or Google Docs.

How the BibTeX to ACS conversion works

Copy a BibTeX entry from your .bib file or reference manager and paste it into the input field.
CiteTools parses the entry’s fields and decodes LaTeX markup such as protective braces and accent commands.
Copy the formatted citation, or export the result as plain text, RIS, Word, Rich Text, LaTeX, or PDF.

Example input:

@article{watson1953,
  author  = {Watson, James D. and Crick, Francis H. C.},
  title   = {Molecular Structure of Nucleic Acids},
  journal = {Nature},
  volume  = {171},
  pages   = {737--738},
  year    = {1953},
  doi     = {10.1038/171737a0}
}

About ACS Style

American Chemical Society - used in chemistry and related sciences.

ACS style, from the ACS Guide to Scholarly Communication, is the system of the American Chemical Society journals and of many chemistry courses. Authors are inverted and separated by semicolons, the journal name is set in italics, the year is bold, and the volume is italic. Since the 2025 revision the journal name may stay in full and a title may keep its published capitals. CiteTools prints both as the record gives them and never shortens a journal name. The entry closes with the DOI as an https://doi.org address.

Frequently asked questions

Which BibTeX entry types are supported?

The common types all work: @article, @book, @incollection, @inproceedings, @phdthesis, @techreport, and @misc. CiteTools maps each type onto the matching reference form in your chosen style.

Do I need the full entry?

The parser needs the fields your target style prints. Author, title, and year produce a usable citation; adding journal, volume, and pages makes it complete. A missing field stays missing. Paste the DOI on its own if you want the registered record.

Will braces and LaTeX escapes be cleaned up in ACS?

Yes. Protective braces around capital letters and LaTeX accent commands are decoded before formatting, so the ACS output contains normal readable text instead of markup.