What is IEEE citation format?

IEEE is a numbered citation style used in engineering and computer science. In the text you cite a source with a number in square brackets, such as [1]. The reference list at the end is numbered in the order sources are first cited, and each entry gives author initials and surname, the title in quotation marks (articles) or italics (books), and the publication details.

How do you cite in text in IEEE?

Put the reference number in square brackets on the line, inside the sentence punctuation, with a space before the bracket: "as shown in [3]." You can name the author as well ("Veruggio [2] describes..."), but the number is always required. Reuse the same number each time you cite that source.

Do I number references by the order they appear or alphabetically?

By order of appearance. The first source you cite becomes [1], the second becomes [2], and so on. If you cite [1] again later, it stays [1]. If you add a citation early in the paper while revising, renumber the list so it still follows the order of first citation; reference managers do this for you.

How do I cite multiple sources at once in IEEE?

Give each number its own brackets, separated by commas: [1], [3], [5]. The March 2025 IEEE Reference Guide says ranges are no longer written with an en dash, so [1]–[4] becomes [1], [2], [3], [4]. Older IEEE papers and many university guides still show the en-dash form, so follow your venue's template if it says otherwise.

How do you cite a website in IEEE format?

The IEEE Reference Guide gives: Initial(s) Surname. "Page Title." Website Title. Accessed: Month Day, Year. [Online.] Available: URL. Use the organization as author if no person is named, or start with the page title if there is no author at all.

How many authors do you list before et al. in IEEE?

List all authors up to six. With more than six, give the first author followed by et al. In the running text, use et al. when a reference has three or more authors.

Do I need to abbreviate journal names?

Yes. IEEE abbreviates periodical titles, for example IEEE Trans. Pattern Anal. Mach. Intell. for IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence. The IEEE Reference Guide lists the standard abbreviations, and most reference managers include them.

IEEE Citation Style: How to Number and Format References

IEEE format at a glance

In the text: a number in square brackets, on the line, before the punctuation.

Deep learning is reviewed in [1].

In the reference list: entries numbered in order of first citation.

[1] Y. LeCun, Y. Bengio, and G. Hinton, "Deep learning," Nature, vol. 521, no. 7553, pp. 436–444, May 2015, doi: 10.1038/nature14539.

Source	IEEE reference format
Journal article	J. K. Author, "Name of paper," Abbrev. Title of Periodical, vol. x, no. x, pp. xxx–xxx, Abbrev. Month, year, doi: xxx.
Conference paper	J. K. Author, "Title of paper," in Abbreviated Name of Conf., City of Conf., Abbrev. State, Country, year, pp. xxx–xxx.
Book	J. K. Author, Title of Published Book. City of Publisher, State, Country: Abbrev. of Publisher, year.
Book chapter	J. K. Author, "Title of chapter in the book," in Title of Published Book, X. Editor, Ed., City of Publisher, State, Country: Abbrev. of Publisher, year, pp. xxx–xxx.
Website	J. K. Author. "Page Title." Website Title. Accessed: Abbrev. Month Day, Year. [Online.] Available: URL
Thesis	J. K. Author, "Title of thesis," M.S. thesis, Dept., Univ., City, State, year.
Preprint	J. K. Author, "Title of paper," year, arXiv number.

These templates are taken from the IEEE Reference Guide, version 3.28.2025, published by IEEE Publication Operations.

Engineering and computing work leans on source types that are rare elsewhere and are not in the table above. The guides to technical standards and software and code each work one real example through IEEE alongside APA, MLA, Chicago and Harvard, so you can see what changes between them. The patent guide is IEEE-first, because IEEE is the only one of those styles that publishes a patent format on a free, current reference guide: it gives the IEEE form, then the elements every style needs, rather than presenting a template for APA, MLA or Chicago that those authorities do not publish.

The Official Source

The IEEE Reference Guide is the official citation resource; the current version is dated 28 March 2025 and is linked from the IEEE Author Center (journals.ieeeauthorcenter.ieee.org). The IEEE Editorial Style Manual covers the rest of manuscript formatting. Conferences and university departments sometimes publish their own variations, so check the template you were given.

In-Text Citations

Use numbers in square brackets. The same number is used every time you cite that source.

Basic Citation

The number sits on the line (not superscript), inside the sentence punctuation.

LeCun et al. review deep learning [1].

Multiple Sources

Each number gets its own brackets, separated by commas. The 2025 Reference Guide writes ranges out in full instead of using an en dash.

as mentioned earlier [2], [4], [5], [6], [7], [9]

That phrase is the guide's own illustration. It also gives the rule for ranges: "[1]–[4]" is now written "[1], [2], [3], [4]".

Earlier editions allowed [4]–[6], and you will still see that in published papers and library guides.

Citing Specific Pages

Put the page, equation, figure or section inside the brackets, after the reference number. The guide lists these forms:

[3, Thm. 1]; [3, Lemma 2]; [3, pp. 5–10]; [3, eq. (2)]; [3, Fig. 1]; [3, Appendix I]; [3, Sect. 4.5]; [3, Ch. 2, pp. 5–10]; [3, Algorithm 5]

Author Named in Text

You can mention the author's name, but still include the bracketed number. With three or more authors, use et al. in the text.

Veruggio [2] describes a roadmap for roboethics.
LeCun et al. [1] review deep learning.

The Number as a Noun

IEEE lets the citation stand in for the source itself:

According to [1]; as demonstrated in [2].

Reference List Basics

The list is headed "References." Entries are numbered in the order they first appear in your text, with the bracketed number flush left.

Journal Article

[1] Y. LeCun, Y. Bengio, and G. Hinton, "Deep learning," Nature, vol. 521, no. 7553, pp. 436–444, May 2015, doi: 10.1038/nature14539.

Article titles go in quotation marks with only the first word and proper nouns capitalized. The periodical title is italic and abbreviated.

Conference Paper

[2] G. Veruggio, "The EURON roboethics roadmap," in Proc. Humanoids '06: 6th IEEE-RAS Int. Conf. Humanoid Robots, 2006, pp. 612–617, doi: 10.1109/ICHR.2006.321337.

Note the "in" before the proceedings title, and that the conference name is abbreviated the same way a periodical title is. Citing a conference paper covers the harder decisions: which version to cite when the same work exists as a preprint, a proceedings paper and later a journal article, and what to do with posters, abstracts and slides.

Book

[3] B. K. P. Horn, Robot Vision. Cambridge, MA, USA: MIT Press, 1986.

The Reference Guide prints this book as "B. Klaus and P. Horn, Robot Vision." The book has one author, Berthold K. P. Horn (see the MIT Press page), so the entry above gives his name correctly.

Chapter in an Edited Book

[4] J. McCarthy and P. J. Hayes, "Some philosophical problems from the standpoint of artificial intelligence," in Machine Intelligence 4, B. Meltzer and D. Michie, Eds., Edinburgh, U.K.: Edinburgh Univ. Press, 1969, pp. 463–502.

The guide's own chapter example (G. O. Young, "Synthetic structure of industrial plastics") is a long-standing template entry that we could not match to a real book, so this page uses a real chapter instead, checked against John McCarthy's archive at Stanford.

Website

The guide's pattern is: First Name Initial(s) Last Name. "Page Title." Website Title. Date Accessed. [Online]. Available: Web Address. Applied to a real page with an organization as author:

[5] IEEE. "IEEE Editorial Style Manual." IEEE Author Center Journals. Accessed: Sep. 21, 2026. [Online.] Available: https://journals.ieeeauthorcenter.ieee.org/your-role-in-article-production/ieee-editorial-style-manual/

The guide illustrates the pattern with a placeholder author ("J. Smith") on a CNN.com page. Note the periods (not commas) between elements and the access date before the URL. Many older guides show a different pattern ending in "(accessed Jan. 15, 2024)"; the 2025 guide uses "Accessed: ... [Online.] Available:".

Online Journal Article Without a DOI

J. K. Author, "Name of paper," Abbrev. Title of Periodical, vol. x, no. x, pp. xxx–xxx, Abbrev. Month, year. Accessed: Month Day, Year. [Online]. Available: URL

Thesis or Dissertation

[6] C. E. Shannon, "A symbolic analysis of relay and switching circuits," M.S. thesis, Dept. Elect. Eng., Massachusetts Inst. Technol., Cambridge, MA, USA, 1940.

Shannon's thesis is held in MIT's DSpace repository, which records it as an M.S. thesis in the Department of Electrical Engineering, 1940. For a doctorate, write "Ph.D. dissertation" in place of "M.S. thesis." Which label is right is not always obvious — "thesis" and "dissertation" swap meaning between countries — so take the wording from the awarding institution's own record, as citing a dissertation explains.

Key IEEE Conventions

Author names: initials then surname: J. K. Smith (not John K. Smith, and not Smith, J. K.)
Number of authors: list up to six; with more than six, give the first author and et al.
Journal abbreviations: IEEE Trans. Signal Process. for IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing
Month abbreviations: Jan., Feb., Mar., Apr., May, Jun., Jul., Aug., Sep., Oct., Nov., Dec.
Volume and issue: vol. 28, no. 3
Page ranges: use an en dash: pp. 123–145
DOIs: add at the end as doi: 10.xxxx/xxxxx
US locations: city, state abbreviation and country: New York, NY, USA

Common Mistakes to Avoid

Alphabetizing references: IEEE references follow citation order. This is the most common error.
Giving a source a new number the second time: one source, one number.
Leaving the list out of order after revisions: if you insert a citation early in the paper, renumber so the list still runs [1], [2], [3] in order of first appearance.
Using full first names: initials only.
Wrong bracket style: square brackets on the line, not parentheses or superscripts.
Inverting names: IEEE puts initials first (J. Smith), unlike APA or Vancouver.

Who Uses IEEE Style?

IEEE journals, magazines and conference proceedings use this style, and engineering and computing departments often ask students to follow it. Check the template or handbook you were given.

IEEE vs. Other Numbered Styles

Style	In-text marker	Order	Author format	Primary field
IEEE	[1]	Citation order	J. K. Smith	Engineering, computing
Vancouver	(1), [1] or superscript	Citation order	Smith JK	Medicine
ACS	Superscript, (1) or author-date	Citation order	Smith, J. K.	Chemistry

If you are submitting to a Chinese university or journal, the numbered style you will be asked for is GB/T 7714, which marks each reference with a bracketed document-type code ([J] for a journal article, [M] for a book, [P] for a patent) instead of relying on the container title alone.

Sources

IEEE Publication Operations, IEEE Reference Guide, version 3.28.2025, accessed 21 September 2026
IEEE, IEEE Editorial Style Manual, IEEE Author Center

Wonders formats references in six citation styles, IEEE among them, and exports your library as BibTeX or RIS for LaTeX and reference managers. For the engineering picture, including patents and standards, see an AI research tool for engineering students.