What Is IEEE Citation Style?
IEEE citation style is developed by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers — the world's largest professional organisation for technical fields. It is the de facto standard for papers published in IEEE journals and conference proceedings, and it has been widely adopted by engineering and computer science departments at universities around the world.
Unlike author-date systems such as APA or Harvard, IEEE uses a numbered reference system. Every source gets a number in square brackets — [1], [2], [3] — assigned in the order the source is first cited in the text. The reader can then look up any number in the reference list at the end of the paper to find the full citation details.
This numbering approach keeps the text clean and uncluttered, which is especially important in technical writing where equations, figures, and tables already compete for space on the page. It also eliminates ambiguity when citing multiple authors — there is no need to remember whether to write "et al." after two authors or three.
Which Disciplines Use IEEE?
IEEE is the required citation format for most work submitted to IEEE-affiliated journals and conferences. Beyond that official context, it is widely expected in undergraduate and postgraduate technical reports, lab reports, and dissertations in the following fields:
- Electrical & Electronic Engineering — circuit design, power systems, signal processing
- Computer Science & Software Engineering — algorithms, systems, networks, AI, machine learning
- Telecommunications & Networking — wireless, 5G, protocols, cybersecurity
- Robotics & Automation — control systems, mechatronics, autonomous vehicles
- Aerospace & Mechanical Engineering — many departments adopt IEEE as a default technical style
- Data Science & AI — when publishing in technical venues rather than social science journals
If you are unsure which style your course requires, check your module handbook or ask your supervisor. When no specific style is mandated for a technical paper, IEEE is generally a safe and professional default.
Core Rules of IEEE Format
- References are numbered in the order they first appear in the text — not alphabetically
- In-text citations appear as numbers in square brackets: [1] [2] [3]
- The same source always uses the same number throughout the paper
- Multiple citations: [1], [2] or a consecutive range [1]–[4]
- Author names use initials + last name: J. Smith (not John Smith)
- Journal titles are italicised and abbreviated (use IEEE standard abbreviations)
- Article titles are in "quotation marks" — not italicised
- Only the first word of an article title is capitalised (plus proper nouns)
- Months are abbreviated (Jan., Feb., Apr., etc. — but not May, June, July)
- Pages use en-dash: pp. 123–145
In-Text Citation Rules
In-text citations in IEEE are simply the reference number in square brackets. Place them at the end of a sentence before the full stop, or after the author's name if you are using an attributed sentence.
Basic citation
The proposed algorithm achieves 94.3% accuracy on the benchmark dataset [1].
Multiple sources at once
Several studies have confirmed this result [2], [4], [6].
A range of papers support this conclusion [1]–[5].
Attributing to a specific author
As Chen et al. [3] demonstrated, the error rate decreases with increasing sample size.
Referring to a specific figure or table in another paper
As shown in Fig. 3 of [5], the latency curve plateaus after 1,000 iterations.
Critical rule: numbers are assigned in the order you first cite each source. If you cite source B on page 1 and source A on page 2, B gets [1] and A gets [2] — even though "A" comes first alphabetically. Never renumber sources to make them alphabetical.
Journal Article
This is the most common source type in STEM papers. IEEE uses abbreviated journal names — find official abbreviations in the IEEE Periodicals list or via the MathSciNet abbreviation tool.
Format
[#] A. A. Author, B. B. Author, and C. C. Author, "Title of article," Journal Abbrev., vol. #, no. #, pp. ###–###, Month Year, doi: ##.####/XXXXX.
Example — three authors
[1] J. K. Chen, R. M. Patel, and L. D. Torres, "Deep learning approaches for structural fault detection in civil infrastructure," IEEE Trans. Ind. Electron., vol. 70, no. 4, pp. 1234–1245, Apr. 2023, doi: 10.1109/TIE.2022.3195012.
Example — six or more authors (use "et al." after the first author)
[2] A. Rahman et al., "Federated learning for intrusion detection in heterogeneous IoT networks," IEEE Internet Things J., vol. 10, no. 6, pp. 5012–5025, Mar. 2023, doi: 10.1109/JIOT.2022.3218940.
Books and Book Chapters
Book (single or multiple authors)
Format
[#] A. A. Author, Title of Book, #th ed. City, Country: Publisher, Year.
Example
[3] S. Haykin and B. Van Veen, Signals and Systems, 2nd ed. Hoboken, NJ, USA: Wiley, 2003.
[4] I. Goodfellow, Y. Bengio, and A. Courville, Deep Learning. Cambridge, MA, USA: MIT Press, 2016.
Chapter in an edited book
Example
[5] D. Nguyen, "Optimisation methods for neural networks," in Handbook of Machine Learning, A. B. Editor and C. D. Editor, Eds. London, U.K.: Springer, 2022, pp. 101–135.
Conference Papers
Conference papers are extremely common in CS and engineering. IEEE publishes proceedings from thousands of conferences each year. Use the full conference name in italics, abbreviated where IEEE has a standard abbreviation.
Format
[#] A. Author, B. Author, and C. Author, "Title of paper," in Proc. Conf. Name (Abbrev.), City, Country, Year, pp. ###–###.
Example
[6] D. Nguyen, A. Rahman, and S. Park, "Optimising neural architecture search for edge deployment," in Proc. IEEE Int. Conf. Comput. Vis. (ICCV), Paris, France, 2023, pp. 4501–4509.
[7] M. Liu, Y. Zhang, and H. Wang, "Real-time object detection for autonomous driving using sparse convolution," in Proc. IEEE Conf. Comput. Vis. Pattern Recognit. (CVPR), Vancouver, BC, Canada, 2023, pp. 8800–8810.
Need your engineering paper cited in IEEE format?
Our STEM specialists handle citation for every source type — journals, conferences, standards, patents.
Get Help Now →
Websites and Online Sources
When citing a webpage, try to include: the author or organisation, year, title of the page, site name, the URL, and when you accessed it. IEEE recommends using a "Accessed:" note for webpages because they can change.
Format
[#] A. Author. (Year, Month Day). Title of webpage. [Online]. Available: URL. [Accessed: Month Day, Year].
Example — organisational website
[8] IEEE. (2023, Nov. 10). IEEE reference guide. [Online]. Available: https://ieeeauthorcenter.ieee.org/. [Accessed: Jan. 15, 2024].
Example — government/technical site
[9] National Institute of Standards and Technology. (2023). Cybersecurity framework 2.0. [Online]. Available: https://www.nist.gov/cyberframework. [Accessed: Feb. 3, 2024].
Technical Reports
Technical reports from industry or government agencies are common sources in engineering papers. Include the organisation, report number, and location where possible.
Example
[10] E. E. Reber, R. L. Michell, and C. J. Carter, "Oxygen absorption in the Earth's atmosphere," Aerospace Corp., Los Angeles, CA, USA, Tech. Rep. TR-0200(4230-46)-3, Nov. 1988.
[11] European Space Agency, "Copernicus Earth observation: Annual report 2023," ESA, Paris, France, Rep. ESA-ACT-RPT-2023-001, Mar. 2024.
Theses and Dissertations
Format
[#] A. Author, "Title of thesis," Ph.D. dissertation [or M.S. thesis], Dept. Name, University, City, Country, Year.
Example
[12] S. M. Almeida, "Machine learning approaches in real-time urban traffic prediction," Ph.D. dissertation, Dept. Electr. Eng. Comput. Sci., MIT, Cambridge, MA, USA, 2022.
[13] H. T. Park, "Lightweight convolutional neural networks for mobile edge inference," M.S. thesis, Dept. Comput. Eng., Seoul National Univ., Seoul, South Korea, 2023.
Standards
Standards are frequently cited in engineering papers. Include the standards body, document number, and title.
Example
[14] IEEE Standard for Floating-Point Arithmetic, IEEE Std 754-2019, IEEE, Aug. 2019.
[15] ISO/IEC 27001:2022, Information Security, Cybersecurity and Privacy Protection, ISO, Oct. 2022.
Patents
Format
[#] A. Author, "Title of patent," Country Patent Patent Number, Month Day, Year.
Example
[16] G. Chu and J. Smith, "Adaptive learning rate optimisation for deep neural networks," U.S. Patent 11 234 567, Jan. 26, 2021.
Datasets
Example
[17] J. Deng, W. Dong, R. Socher, L.-J. Li, K. Li, and L. Fei-Fei, "ImageNet: A large-scale hierarchical image database," in Proc. IEEE Conf. Comput. Vis. Pattern Recognit. (CVPR), Miami, FL, USA, 2009, pp. 248–255.
Quick Reference: IEEE Formatting Rules
| Element | Rule | Example |
|---|
| Author names | Initials + Last name | J. K. Smith |
| Three or more authors | List all, or first author + "et al." | A. Author et al. |
| Article title | Quotation marks, sentence case | "Deep learning for fault detection" |
| Journal/book title | Italics, abbreviated | IEEE Trans. Ind. Electron. |
| Volume | vol. # (lowercase) | vol. 70 |
| Issue/number | no. # (lowercase) | no. 4 |
| Pages | pp. ###–### (en-dash) | pp. 1234–1245 |
| Month | 3-letter abbreviation | Apr. (not April) |
| DOI | doi: ## (lowercase, no URL) | doi: 10.1109/TIE.2022.3195012 |
| Online source | [Online]. Available: URL | [Online]. Available: https://… |
Common IEEE Abbreviations for Journals
| Full Journal Name | IEEE Abbreviation |
|---|
| IEEE Transactions on Industrial Electronics | IEEE Trans. Ind. Electron. |
| IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications | IEEE J. Sel. Areas Commun. |
| IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks and Learning Systems | IEEE Trans. Neural Netw. Learn. Syst. |
| IEEE Transactions on Power Systems | IEEE Trans. Power Syst. |
| Proceedings of the IEEE | Proc. IEEE |
| IEEE Access | IEEE Access |
| Nature (not IEEE, but common) | Nature |
The Most Common IEEE Mistakes
Students lose marks on these errors repeatedly. Avoid them:
- Alphabetical ordering: IEEE reference lists are in citation order, not A–Z. This is the single most common mistake.
- Assigning new numbers to repeated sources: if you cite [3] again later, it is still [3] — never assign a new number to a source already in the list.
- Full author first names: use initials only — J. K. Smith, not John Kevin Smith.
- Not italicising the journal name: the journal is in italics; the article title is in quotation marks.
- Writing "doi:" as a URL: in IEEE, write doi: 10.1109/xxx — not the full https://doi.org/10.1109/xxx link.
- Capitalising every word in article titles: only the first word and proper nouns are capitalised in IEEE article titles.
- Using hyphens instead of en-dashes for page ranges: pp. 1234–1245, not pp. 1234-1245.
- No issue number: include both volume and issue (vol. 70, no. 4) — many students omit the issue number.
A note on formatting tools: Reference managers such as Zotero, Mendeley, and EndNote can generate IEEE citations automatically, but they frequently make formatting errors — wrong capitalisation, wrong dash type, or omitting the issue number. Always manually check auto-generated IEEE citations against this guide before submitting.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I cite a source more than once in IEEE?
Yes — and when you do, use the same number. If you cite [3] in your introduction, and then refer to the same paper again in your discussion section, you still write [3]. You do not create a new entry in the reference list.
What if I need to cite two papers by the same authors from the same year?
In IEEE this is not a problem — each source simply gets its own number regardless of who wrote it or when. There is no need to add letters (like "Smith 2022a" in APA). Each paper is [X] and [Y] in the order you cited them.
Do I need to include a DOI for every journal article?
Include the DOI whenever it is available. For older articles published before DOIs existed, include the full journal volume, issue, and page range so the reader can locate the paper. The IEEE Reference Guide states that DOIs are preferred over URLs for journal articles.
How do I cite a paper I found on arXiv (preprint)?
[18] A. Vaswani, N. Shazeer, N. Parmar, J. Uszkoreit, L. Jones, A. N. Gomez, L. Kaiser, and I. Polosukhin, "Attention is all you need," arXiv:1706.03762 [cs.LG], Jun. 2017. [Online]. Available: https://arxiv.org/abs/1706.03762.
How do I format IEEE citations in a report versus a formal journal paper?
The reference format is identical. The difference is in the header — journal papers follow IEEE's strict template including abstract, keywords, and section structure. For university reports, your department may allow a simplified header. The citation format itself does not change.
My journal has no issue number — only a volume. What do I do?
Some journals (especially those published in article number format) do not use traditional issue numbers. In that case, include the article number: vol. 10, Art. no. 102345, 2023.
Need a quick check? The IEEE Author Center publishes the official IEEE Reference Guide as a free PDF. It covers every source type including software, datasets, and social media posts.