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ACS

ACS (American Chemical Society) is a numbered referencing style requiring an in-text citation within the text of your document and a related entry in a reference list at the end of your document.

Patent - reference list

Authors: Patents have two types of authors:

  • inventor(s) of the patent.
  • assignee(s) - the individual(s) or organisation(s) that own the patent. Including assignee names in citations is optional. 

Follow the rules for authors' names for formatting inventor and assignee name(s).

Patent or Application title: Use title case (major words as well as the first word in the title and the subtitle are capitalised). 

Patent or Application number: Provide the patent or application number. When possible, cite the Country Code (CC), Patent/Application number and Kind Code (KC) exactly as they appear on the document, without extra spaces or commas, e.g. CC12345678KC.

Date: Use the patent’s publication date, not the filing year. Format as YYYY (e.g. 2024) or optionally as Month day, year (e.g. May 30, 2024).

Refer to Section 4.3.5.12 of the ACS Guide to Scholarly Communication for more on citing patents.

For more information on reference list format and style, see General information - basics of referencing.

Format

1. Inventor Name(s). Patent Title or Patent Application. Patent or Application number, Date. 

Examples

1. Revankar, V.; Lahoti, S. Process for Improved Chemical Vapor Deposition of Polysilicon. US8399072B2, March 19, 2013.

2. Nye, W. S. Toe Shoe. US2004/0093761A1, May 20, 2004.

3. Gaddum, T. A. Chemical Applicator. NZ753510, Aug 30, 2019.

Format

1. Inventor Name(s), Inventor(s); Assignee Name(s), Assignee(s). Patent Title or Patent Application. Patent or Application number, Date.

Example

1. Chen, M.; Tworek, J.; Sutskever, I.; Zaremba, W.; Jun, H.; Ponde, D. O. P. H., Inventors; OpenAI OpCo, LLC, Assignee; Systems and Methods for Generating Natural Language Using Language Models Trained on Computer Code. US2024/0020116A1, January 18, 2024.

Patent - in-text citations

Put a superscript number in your text to show when you are using another person's ideas or words. This number directs the reader to the reference list, containing information about the work you are citing.

Examples

... has been recently identified.1 

If you are making a direct quotation, use quotation marks.

Dalas and Koutsoukos observed that "the presence of the magnetic field did not result in preferential growth of a certain crystal face."2

If the same source is referred to more than once within your text, repeat the number. If you are expressing ideas that have originated from more than one source, separate the numbers with commas, or use a hyphen if referring to several endnotes. A number following the full stop/period applies to the whole sentence.

...in alkyl sulphates such as sodium lauryl sulphate3,5-7 and diethyl sulphate6. Chew and Maibach3 also noted that the compounds showing promise were those in the C12 - C14 range.