IEEE Format: The Complete Citation and Reference Guide

IEEE style is the citation system used in electrical and electronic engineering, computer science, telecommunications and much of technical writing.

It comes from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, which publishes the IEEE Reference Guide and the IEEE Editorial Style Manual. Instead of naming authors and years in the text, IEEE uses numbers in square brackets that lead to a numbered reference list.

This guide is a full reference for students and researchers. It covers how citations are numbered, the rules for authors, titles, dates and DOIs, the formats for every common source type, how to handle PDFs and sources with missing details, how to convert a list from another style, and the difference between a reference list and a bibliography.

In-Text Citations

Place the bracketed number inside the sentence, before the punctuation, usually straight after the author's name or the claim it supports. Each source keeps its number for the whole document, so you never renumber a source the second time you cite it.

Write each number in its own brackets: [2], [5], not [2, 5]. Do not say "in reference [3]" or "in [3] by Chen"; IEEE prefers the number to stand in for the source, as in "in [3]". You can name an author in the sentence, but the number is still required.

Reference List Rules

The list goes at the end under the heading "References". Each entry begins with its number in square brackets, set flush left, and the text of the entry is indented so the numbers form a clean column. The entries run in numerical order, which is the order of first citation.

• Every entry must be cited in the text, and every citation must lead to an entry.
• Number citations in tables and figure captions according to where the table or figure is first mentioned in the text.
• Do not split the list by source type or sort it alphabetically.
• Each entry ends with a full stop, except when it ends with a URL or a DOI written as a link, which many guides leave without a final stop.

Author Names

IEEE puts initials before the surname, with a full stop and a space after each initial. This is the opposite of APA, Harvard and Vancouver, and it is the detail students most often get wrong when converting.

The IEEE Reference Guide uses the first author followed by et al. when there are more than six names. Some course templates use a lower cut-off, so check your template if you have one.

Titles, Capitalization and Abbreviations

Titles of parts go in quotation marks; titles of wholes go in italics. An article, conference paper or chapter is a part, so it takes double quotation marks with the comma inside the closing mark. A journal, book or conference proceedings is a whole, so it is italicized.

• Article, paper and chapter titles: sentence case, so capitalize the first word, proper nouns and acronyms only. "Deep learning for radar target recognition," not "Deep Learning for Radar Target Recognition,".
• Book titles: italic, main words capitalized: Introduction to Antenna Theory.
• Journal and conference names: abbreviated using IEEE's standard abbreviations, for example IEEE Trans. Commun. for IEEE Transactions on Communications and Proc. IEEE for Proceedings of the IEEE.
• Common words used in references: vol., no., pp., p., ch., sec., ed., Ed., Eds., Rep., Tech. Rep., Art. no.
• Months: Jan., Feb., Mar., Apr., Aug., Sept., Oct., Nov., Dec.; May, June and July are written in full.

DOIs, URLs and Access Dates

Give a DOI whenever the source has one. The IEEE Reference Guide places it at the end of the entry after a comma, written as "doi:" followed by the DOI number. For sources read online without a DOI, IEEE adds "[Online]. Available:" and the URL, and for pages that may change, an access date.

Formats for Every Common Source Type

Use this table as your working template. Copy the pattern that matches your source, then replace each part with your details. Elements in italics in the pattern are italicized in your reference.

Worked Examples

Look at the book example. With no edition, a full stop follows the italic title; with an edition, a comma follows the title and the edition, then a full stop: Title, 3rd ed. City, Country: Publisher, Year. Journal articles have their own details, such as article numbers and early access, which are covered in the IEEE journal citation guide.

How to Cite a PDF in IEEE

IEEE has no separate format for "a PDF". A PDF is only a file type, so you cite the kind of document it is: a journal article, a conference paper, a technical report, a thesis, a standard or a white paper. Work out what the document is first, then use that pattern.

• Journal article downloaded as a PDF: cite it as a journal article, with its DOI. Do not mention the PDF.
• Report or white paper from an organization's website: cite it as a report and add "[Online]. Available:" with the URL, plus the access date.
• Lecture slides or course notes: give the lecturer, the title in quotation marks, "class notes" or "lecture slides", the course, the university and the date; check whether your course allows these as sources at all.
• No author: start with the organization; if there is none, start with the title.
• No date: write "n.d." where the year would go.

Converting a Reference List to IEEE

Converting from APA, Harvard or MLA to IEEE is mechanical but easy to get wrong because every part of the entry moves. Work in this order and the conversion stays accurate.

1. Go through your text and number each source in order of first citation. Replace each author-date citation, such as (Smith, 2021), with its number, [1].
2. Reorder the reference list to match the numbers. The alphabetical order disappears.
3. Rewrite author names with initials first, and use "and" before the last author.
4. Move the year from after the authors to near the end of the entry, with the month where available.
5. Change article titles to double quotation marks and sentence case; italicize and abbreviate journal titles.
6. Add vol., no. and pp. labels, and put the DOI at the end after "doi:".

A tool such as the IEEE citation generator speeds this up when you have many sources. Paste the details of each source, then check the output for journal abbreviations, sentence-case titles and the order of the list, because generators work from the data you give them and cannot see your text.

Reference List or Bibliography?

IEEE uses a reference list: only the sources you cite, numbered in order of citation. An IEEE "bibliography" in the strict sense does not exist, but some lecturers ask for one.

If yours does, check what they mean. Usually it is a list of background reading that you consulted but did not cite, placed after the references under its own heading, formatted in IEEE style and often arranged alphabetically without numbers.

If the instruction simply says "IEEE bibliography", a numbered reference list of cited works is usually what is wanted, but it is worth asking.

IEEE Paper Layout at a Glance

"IEEE format" sometimes means the layout of the whole paper, not just the references. IEEE conference and journal templates share a recognizable look. Always download the current template for the conference, journal or course you are writing for, because details change between venues.

Common IEEE Mistakes

How We Help with IEEE Papers and References

Send your draft, your sources, and the template or style notes from your course, conference or journal. A writer in engineering or computing numbers citations in order of first appearance, formats every reference with IEEE abbreviations and labels, converts lists from other styles, and checks that the text and the list match.

If you need a full report or paper written as a model, IEEE referencing is built in from the start. Work is plagiarism-checked, your identity is never shared with the writer, and revisions within the scope of your original request are free.