Chemical Reviews Formatting Requirements: Complete Author Guide

Chemical Reviews uses a concise abstract that's dwarfed by the paper it summarizes.

• Word limit: 100 to 200 words

• Structure: One paragraph

• Content focus: Subject and scope of the review, the major topics covered, and the overall objectives; the abstract should be self-contained

Writing a 100 to 200 word abstract for a long review is an exercise in extreme compression. Don't try to summarize every section. Instead, state the field being reviewed, note the time period or scope, and highlight the most important conclusions or emerging trends.

TOC/Abstract graphic: This is a mandatory visual element that appears alongside the abstract on the ACS Publications website and in the journal's table of contents.

Specifications:

• Dimensions: 5 cm x 5 cm, fitting an area no larger than 5 cm by 5 cm, per the Chemical Reviews author guidelines. ACS's general TOC graphic guidelines (updated February 28, 2024) give an area no larger than 3.25 by 1.75 inches (about 8.25 cm by 4.45 cm). The two ACS documents differ; a graphic no wider than 5 cm and no taller than 4.45 cm fits both

• Resolution: 300 dpi for color and 1200 dpi for black and white

• Format: TIFF per the Chemical Reviews author guidelines (the general ACS guidelines also allow EPS with RGB color and fonts converted to outlines or embedded)

• Label it "For Table of Contents Only" and place it on the last page of the manuscript

• Should visually represent the scope or theme of the review

• No text-heavy images; keep labels minimal

The TOC graphic for a Chemical Reviews article serves a different purpose than for a research article. It needs to represent the breadth of the review topic, not a single experimental result. The best Chemical Reviews TOC graphics are conceptual diagrams or visual maps of the field.

Chemical Reviews articles are figure-rich. It's common for a review to contain many figures plus numerous tables and schemes (chemical reaction diagrams).

Figure specifications:

Schemes: Chemical Reviews makes heavy use of chemical schemes (reaction diagrams, synthetic routes, mechanism illustrations). ACS defines a scheme as a sequence of reactions and a chart as a group of structures that do not show reactions, and each may have a brief caption. Structures should be produced with a drawing program such as ChemDraw.

Tables: Chemical Reviews tables can be substantial. Many reviews include comparison tables spanning multiple pages. Tables must have:

• Numbering in consecutive Arabic numerals

• A brief (one phrase or sentence) title at the head of the table, after the table number

• Footnotes placed directly below the table and cited by superscript italic letters

• Consistent formatting throughout

Biographies: The ACS author guidelines say each author should include a short biography. The guidelines give no word count and do not mention photographs, so check a recent Chemical Reviews article for the published layout. Cover the author's background, research interests, and current position.

This biography requirement catches first-time authors off guard. Prepare these early, especially if you have multiple co-authors who need to provide text.

Chemical Reviews uses the standard ACS reference style. Given the length of these reviews, reference lists are massive.

In-text citations: Superscript numbers, e.g., "as reported by Smith et al.^{1}" The numbers are sequential by order of first appearance.

Reference list format (worked example with the bold year and italic volume the ACS style applies):

(1) Smith, A. B.; Jones, C. D. Title of Article. *Chem. Rev.* **2026**, *126*, 1234-1267.

Key formatting details:

• Author names: Last name, then initials (Smith, A. B.)

• Semicolons between authors

• Journal titles abbreviated per CAS (Chemical Abstracts Service) conventions

• Year in bold, followed by volume in italics

• Starting and ending page numbers included (the ACS example uses a hyphen)

• DOIs for "in press" references when available

• For books: Author, A. B. Title of Book; Publisher: City, Year; pp Pages.

Reference count: The ACS author guidelines state no limit on the number of references, but every reference should be relevant and discussed in context. A reference list that's just a dump of every paper in the field won't serve readers well.

Managing hundreds of references manually is impractical. Use a citation manager (EndNote, Zotero, or Mendeley) with the ACS style file.

Citation of your own work: Chemical Reviews expects balance. Self-citation is acceptable where relevant, but reviewers and editors will flag reviews that disproportionately cite the author's own publications while omitting other groups' work.

Chemical Reviews articles can include Supporting Information (SI) hosted on the ACS Publications website.

What goes in Supporting Information:

• Extended tables that would disrupt the flow of the review

• Complete datasets used to generate comparison tables

• Supplementary schemes or reaction examples

Format requirements:

• Prepare all SI files of the same type as a single file (for example, all PDF content in one PDF), uploaded separately at the same time as the manuscript

• Make the first page a title page with the manuscript title, all author names, and a table of contents

• Number pages S1 (the title page), S2, and so on, and label items Figure S1 and Table S1

• Do not upload figures and tables that are to be published in the article into the SI file

• Keep files manageable

Given the already extensive length of Chemical Reviews articles, the need for Supporting Information is less common than in research journals. However, when a review includes comprehensive comparison tables or datasets, the SI is the appropriate place for the complete data while the main text contains summarized or selected entries.

ACS requires a Supporting Information paragraph in the main manuscript that describes what's included in the SI files, in nonsentence format. This appears before the Acknowledgments and References.

Because ACS considers a full review only by invitation or after an approved proposal, the submission process differs from standard journals.

How the two routes work:

1. An editor invites an author, directly or through a Thematic Issue guest editor, or an author without an invitation submits a proposal on the ACS proposal template

1. Proposal material is examined by the Editor and often expert reviewers, and a decision is usually reached within two months

1. An accepted proposal results in an invitation to submit the full review

1. The author submits the full review through the invitation on the ACS Publishing Center dashboard

1. All manuscripts are peer reviewed (single anonymous review), even when invited, and final acceptance is contingent upon a satisfactory response to the reviewers' comments

Can you propose a review? Yes. Authors who have not received an invitation should first submit a proposal (no more than five pages, with at least five recommended reviewers). A July 2024 Chemical Reviews editorial says a significant number of proposals are rejected.

Required submission components:

• Complete manuscript (Word or LaTeX) with the standard sections, with figures, tables, and schemes embedded in the text (separate graphics can be supplied later at revision)

• TOC/Abstract graphic

• Short author biographies

• Supporting Information (if applicable)

• Cover letter (ACS requires one with every submission)

Copyright: ACS requires a completed and signed Journal Publishing Agreement in order to publish any manuscript, and authors are notified to complete it when a manuscript is selected for publication. Open access is available for an article publishing charge.

These are the details that Chemical Reviews authors learn through experience:

Author biographies are expected. The ACS author guidelines say each author should include a short biography; they give no word count and do not mention photographs. Prepare these early, because collecting bios from all co-authors takes time.

Schemes are separate from figures. The ACS guidelines treat Figures, Charts, Tables, and Schemes as separate kinds of graphics. A scheme is a sequence of reactions, and a chart is a group of structures that do not show reactions.

Heading numbering matters. ACS requires a table of contents for the entire manuscript, and the main divisions and subdivisions must use the designations 1, 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, 2, 2.1, 2.2, 2.2.1, and so on. The table of contents should reflect the first two divisions and may list the third subdivision if such sections are lengthy and not too numerous, and its entries should be identical to those in the body. For a long review, outline your section structure carefully before writing.

Page proofs on a short clock. The corresponding author corrects galley proofs through ACS Direct Correct, and ACS asks that galley proofs be returned within 48 hours. Budget time for proof review.

Dual publication check. ACS checks for text overlap with other published reviews. If you've written reviews on similar topics for other journals, make sure your Chemical Reviews article doesn't reuse text verbatim. Paraphrasing your own prior reviews is acceptable; copying is not.

Acknowledgments and funding. ACS requires authors to report funding sources and grant/award numbers: enter all sources of funding for all authors in both the Funder Registry Tool in the submission system and the manuscript.

Abbreviations list. ACS says a list of abbreviations should be included if applicable. For a review article with dozens of specialized abbreviations, include an Abbreviations section. It helps readers in a field where different groups use different abbreviations for the same concepts.

For manuscripts targeting Chemical Reviews, four patterns generate the most consistent desk-rejection outcomes.

Unsolicited submissions without an invitation or approved proposal. ACS considers a full review only by invitation or after an approved proposal. Unsolicited manuscripts are not considered; authors without an invitation must first submit a proposal through the ACS Publishing Center on the Chemical Reviews proposal template (a two- or three-page topical outline, previous reviews of the subject, five closely related papers by the authors, and at least five recommended reviewers, in no more than five pages). A July 2024 Chemical Reviews editorial says many published articles are unsolicited reviews with topics proposed by individual authors.

Literature coverage incomplete or outdated for a review journal. As the flagship ACS review journal, Chemical Reviews sets an exceptionally high bar for literature comprehensiveness. Reviewers expect coverage to include all primary literature on the topic through the submission date. Gaps in coverage of competing mechanistic models, recent preprints, or non-English literature are flagged in peer review as incompleteness.

Review summarizes rather than synthesizes and critically evaluates. Chemical Reviews editors make an explicit distinction between a literature summary (describing what papers exist) and a critical review (evaluating the quality and consistency of evidence, identifying unresolved controversies, and proposing a framework). Reviews that walk chronologically through landmark papers without committing to a critical assessment of competing interpretations are returned with requests to add analysis.

Invited review scope drifts from the commissioned topic. When editors invite a review or approve a proposal, the topic and scope are set by the invitation or the approved proposal outline. Reviews that expand the scope beyond the commission (covering adjacent subfields not included in the agreed outline, or exceeding the length by 30%+ without editorial approval) create significant revision burdens.

The outline approval stage is the correct time to negotiate scope changes, and in our review work we check the abstract, the section headings, and the reference span against the commissioned outline before submission so the drift is caught early rather than at production.

A Chemical Reviews submission readiness check evaluates manuscript structure, literature comprehensiveness, and synthesis quality against these desk-rejection patterns before submission.