IEEE Reference Format: Templates and Examples for Every Source

IEEE (the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) uses a numbered citation system. In IEEE reference format, instead of an author and year in parentheses, you put a number in square brackets in your sentence. The References section at the end lists the sources by number, in the order you first cited them. It's standard in electrical engineering and computer science courses.

Citation order, not alphabetical order

The first source you cite is [1], the second new source is [2], and so on. If you cite source [1] again on page 6, it's still [1]. Because the list follows citation order, you never alphabetize an IEEE reference list. Purdue OWL's IEEE reference list page sums it up: references are “listed and numbered in order of citation, not alphabetically.”

Paste a source above

The IEEE citation generator embedded above handles the formatting. Paste a DOI, URL, ISBN or title, check the fields, and copy the numbered entry. Add sources in the order you cite them so the numbers match.

Parts of every reference

Each entry in IEEE reference format follows the same pattern: authors as initials and last name, the title of the part in quotation marks, the title of the whole in italics, then the publication details, the date and a DOI or URL. The entry ends with a period unless it ends with a URL.

An IEEE in-text citation is just the reference number in square brackets. It sits on the line, not as a superscript, and goes inside the punctuation: “… as shown in [1].” Refer to the source by its number alone, so write “in [1],” not “in reference [1].”

Page numbers and parts of a source

To point to a specific spot, put it inside the bracket after a comma: [1, p. 5], [1, pp. 5–10] or [1, Fig. 3].

Several sources at once

To cite several sources in one IEEE in-text citation, give each number its own brackets, separated by commas: [1], [3], [5]. For three or more numbers in a row, Purdue OWL and many instructors use an en dash: [2]–[4]. The current IEEE Reference Guide (version 3.28.2025) has dropped the dash and writes each number out: [2], [3], [4]. Follow your instructor.

Naming the author

An IEEE in-text citation can also follow the author's name in your sentence: Shannon [1] showed that every channel has a capacity. For a source with three or more authors, the IEEE Reference Guide says to use the first author's name and “et al.” in the text: He et al. [2].

An IEEE in-text citation example in a paragraph

Residual networks made very deep image classifiers practical [2]. He et al. [2] trained networks far deeper than the convolutional designs of the 1990s [4], [8]. The lab code is written in C [3, p. 5].

The journal article is the most common entry in IEEE reference format, and the IEEE format citation for a journal is the one students need first. The template from the IEEE Reference Guide is:

J. K. Author, “Name of paper,” Abbrev. Title of Periodical, vol. x, no. x, pp. xxx–xxx, Abbrev. Month year, doi: xxx.

Abbreviated journal names

IEEE asks for official journal abbreviations: Proc. IRE for Proceedings of the IRE, or IEEE Trans. Power Electron. for IEEE Transactions on Power Electronics. The IEEE Author Center links a spreadsheet of IEEE journal abbreviations. One-word titles such as Nature and Science aren't abbreviated. Many instructors accept full names in a student paper.

How many authors to list

List every author up to six. With more than six, give the first author followed by et al., as in “A. Author et al.” The IEEE citation generator applies this rule automatically.

Months

Shorten month names to three or four letters with a period, such as Jan., Feb., Aug. and Oct. Purdue OWL's list writes May, June and July in full and uses Sept.; the IEEE Reference Guide itself, like our tool, prints Jun., Jul. and Sep.

These three types fill most of the rest of a list in IEEE reference format.

Conference papers

Template: J. K. Author, “Title of paper,” in Abbreviated Name of Conf., (location optional), year, pp. xxx–xxx, doi: xxx. The easiest route is to paste the paper's DOI into the citation generator, which recognizes proceedings papers; see entry [2] in the examples above. Some instructors want the conference name abbreviated, as in Proc. IEEE Conf. Comput. Vis. Pattern Recognit.

Books

Template: J. K. Author, Title of Book, xth ed. City, State, Country: Publisher, year. Include the state only for US cities, and cite a specific page in the text, as in [3, p. 5].

Book chapters

Template: J. K. Author, “Title of chapter,” in Title of Book, X. Editor, Ed., City, State, Country: Publisher, year, pp. xxx–xxx. Use “Eds.” for more than one editor.

An IEEE citation for a website needs a few extra parts: the site name, the date you accessed the page and the address. The template our engine follows, from the CSL style for the 2023 guide, is:

Author (or organization), “Title of page,” Website Name. Accessed: Abbrev. Month day, year. [Online]. Available: URL

Websites with no author

In an IEEE citation for a website with no named person, the organization that wrote the page stands in as author, as in the NIST example above. If there's no clear organization either, start the entry with the page title: [6] “Leap second and UT1-UTC information,” NIST. Accessed: Oct. 26, 2026. [Online]. Available: https://www.nist.gov/pml/time-and-frequency-division/time-realization/leap-seconds

Dates and access dates

Web pages change, so write the date you read the page after “Accessed:” with an abbreviated month.

Punctuation differences you may see

The IEEE Reference Guide's own website template separates the parts with periods (Author. “Title.” Website.), while the open CSL style used by most reference managers, including ours, uses commas. Purdue OWL shows an older form that ends with the access date in parentheses. All three carry the same information; use whichever your instructor's sample shows.

Engineering papers cite technical documents that other styles rarely see. Each has its own template in IEEE reference format.

Standards

Template: Title of Standard, Standard number, date. Standards have no personal author, so the italic title comes first. IEEE standards have DOIs on IEEE Xplore, and pasting the DOI into the citation generator fetches the title and publisher. Some standard records arrive without the year or the standard number, so add the year in the tool and type the number into your final list.

Technical reports

Template: J. K. Author, “Title of report,” Company, City, State, Country, Rep. no., date. NIST publications, white papers and datasheets fit here.

Theses and dissertations

Template: J. K. Author, “Title of thesis,” M.S. thesis, Abbrev. Dept., Abbrev. Univ., City, State, Country, year. Use “Ph.D. dissertation” for a doctoral work, and add [Online]. Available: with a repository link if you read it online.

Patents: format these by hand

The citation generator has no patent type, so write patents yourself from the IEEE template: J. K. Author, “Title of patent,” U.S. Patent x xxx xxx, Abbrev. Month day, year. For example:

[9] A. G. Bell, “Improvement in telegraphy,” U.S. Patent 174 465, Mar. 7, 1876.

IEEE writes the patent number with spaces instead of commas, and keeps the day of the month.

Here's how these IEEE referencing style examples fit together on one References page, as they'd appear at the end of a lab report or term paper. Each number is the order in which the paper first cites the source.

Layout of the page

Title the page References and put the bracketed numbers flush left, with each entry's text aligned after them. Follow your instructor's spacing rules.

Where to go next

For the numbered list itself, let the IEEE referencing generator build it as you work. If you're writing for a humanities course instead, the Turabian format guide covers notes and bibliographies, and the APA format guidelines guide covers author-date papers.

Mechanical engineering students often meet ASME style (American Society of Mechanical Engineers). Like IEEE, it cites bracketed numbers in order of first citation.

The difference between ASME referencing and IEEE format

The differences are in the entries. ASME writes the author's last name first with initials after (Adams, Z.), puts the year right after the authors, and uses a hyphenated range for consecutive citations, such as [5-7]. IEEE reference format puts initials first (Z. Adams), places the date near the end, and writes the numbers out or uses an en dash between bracketed numbers.

Which engineering reference format to use

Use the style your course, department or target journal names.

These are the errors instructors mark most often when students are referencing in IEEE format, with the fix for each.

IEEE publishes the rules of IEEE reference format in the IEEE Reference Guide and the IEEE Editorial Style Manual. Both are now hosted as Google Docs linked from the IEEE Editorial Style Manual page on the IEEE Author Center, along with the list of journal abbreviations. The guide is updated in place; the version we checked is dated March 28, 2025.

Purdue OWL and your instructor

Purdue OWL's IEEE in-text citation page is a clear student summary. Where it differs from the newest IEEE guide, as with citation ranges, follow your instructor.

Which version our tool uses

The citation generator uses the open CSL style “IEEE Reference Guide version 11.29.2023,” maintained by Zotero and CSL volunteers, not by IEEE. Its IEEE reference format output follows the guide's 2023 templates closely. Every guide we publish is listed on the student writing guides page.