IEEE Citation Style: A Quick Reference with Examples

IEEE style is the numbered citation system used by most electrical, electronics, computer and communications engineering publications. This card covers the patterns students need most. For anything not covered here, the authority is the IEEE Reference Guide published on the IEEE Author Center.

About the examples. All example references below are fictitious and exist only to show the format. Do not cite them.

The two rules that matter most

1. Number sources in the order you first cite them. The first source you mention is [1], the next new one is [2], and so on. Re-use the same number every time you cite that source again.

2. Put the number in square brackets, inside the sentence, before punctuation.

Ultrasonic sensors are widely used for low-cost obstacle detection [1], [3]. As shown in [2], latency increases with frame size. Several studies [4]–[7] report similar results.

Write “in [2]” or “as shown in [2]” — not “in reference [2]” — and you may use the number as a noun, as in the second example.

Author names

Initials first, then surname: A. B. Sharma.
Two authors: A. Sharma and R. Iyer.
Three to six: list all, comma-separated, “and” before the last.
More than six: first author followed by et al. — e.g. A. Sharma et al.

Patterns and examples

Journal article

[n] A. B. Author, "Title of article," Abbrev. Title of Journal, vol. x, no. x,
    pp. xxx–xxx, Abbrev. Month Year, doi: xx.xxxx/xxxxx.

[1] A. Sharma and R. Iyer, “Low-cost ultrasonic obstacle detection for indoor mobile robots,” Int. J. Example Eng., vol. 4, no. 7, pp. 112–119, Jul. 2015.

Journal titles are italicised and abbreviated using standard abbreviations. Article titles are in “quotation marks”, with only the first word and proper nouns capitalised.

Conference paper

[n] A. B. Author, "Title of paper," in Proc. Abbrev. Name of Conf., City,
    Country, Year, pp. xx–xx, doi: xx.xxxx/xxxxx.

[2] K. Rao, “Real-time video transmission over Wi-Fi for teleoperated robots,” in Proc. Int. Conf. Example Robot., Pune, India, 2019, pp. 45–50.

Book

[n] A. B. Author, Title of Book, xth ed. City, Country: Publisher, Year.

[3] P. Menon, Introduction to Embedded Systems, 2nd ed. Chennai, India: Example Press, 2018.

A chapter in an edited book:

[n] A. B. Author, "Title of chapter," in Title of Book, X. Editor, Ed.
    City, Country: Publisher, Year, pp. xx–xx.

Thesis or dissertation

[n] A. B. Author, "Title of thesis," M.S. thesis / Ph.D. dissertation,
    Dept. Abbrev., Univ. Name, City, Country, Year.

[4] S. Kulkarni, “Vision-based navigation for low-power robots,” M.Tech. thesis, Dept. Electron. Eng., Example Univ., Nagpur, India, 2020.

Standard

[n] Title of Standard, Standard Number, Year.

Web page or online document

[n] Author or Organization, "Title of page," Website Name. Accessed:
    Abbrev. Month Day, Year. [Online]. Available: URL

[5] Example Robotics Society, “Sensor selection guide,” Example Robotics Society. Accessed: Sep. 23, 2026. [Online]. Available: https://example.org/sensors

Always include the access date for web material — pages change.

Common mistakes

Mistake	Correct practice
Numbering references alphabetically	Number in order of first citation
(1) or superscript¹	Square brackets: [1]
Full first names	Initials: A. B. Sharma
Title Case For Article Titles	Sentence case in quotation marks
Missing volume, issue or pages	Include all that exist; check the published version
Citing a dead link only	Add DOI if one exists; see finding papers from defunct journals
Listing sources never cited in the text	Every listed reference must be cited, and vice versa

Tools

Reference managers such as Zotero (free, open source) and Mendeley include an IEEE style and format references automatically. Always check the output: automatic formatting is only as good as the metadata you imported.

If your department or target journal provides its own template, follow it — local instructions take priority over this card.