JACS Submission Guide 2026: Requirements, Formatting and What Editors Want

Decision cue: If you need a yes/no submission call today, compare your draft with 3 recent accepted papers from this journal and only submit when scope, methods depth, and claim strength line up.

Related: How to choose a journal • How to avoid desk rejection • Pre-submission checklist

Submission at a glance

Article types in detail

Articles are the primary JACS format. They present full accounts of completed research programs. No hard word limit, but most published Articles run 5,000-10,000 words of main text plus supporting information. Complete experimental details and characterization data go in the Supporting Information, not the main text.

JACS Au publishes Letters: shorter, faster-moving communications of important results. Letters target 2,000-4,000 words. JACS Au is fully open access. If your result is significant but the scope is more focused than a full Article, JACS Au Letters is worth considering. It's part of the same ACS flagship program and has its own impact metrics.

Perspectives are invited review/forward-looking articles from leaders in a subfield. Occasionally accepted on an unsolicited basis. If you plan to submit a Perspective unsolicited, email the editor first.

Viewpoints are short opinion pieces on developments in chemistry. Invited only in most cases.

What JACS editors assess at the desk

JACS Associate Editors are working chemists, not professional editorial staff. They read your submission between their own research, teaching, and review obligations. Getting past the desk review requires clearing two bars:

Significance for a flagship general chemistry journal. JACS covers the whole field. A paper that would be a top-tier contribution to a subfield journal (ACS Catalysis, Journal of Organic Chemistry, Inorganic Chemistry) may not be broad enough for JACS. The key question: would a physical chemist, an organic chemist, and a biochemist all find this work interesting?

Novelty and conceptual advance. JACS rejects incremental work. If you're adding substrate scope to a known transformation without mechanistic insight, or synthesizing analogs of a known compound class without a new finding, expect desk rejection. The advance needs to be conceptual, not just technical.

Common desk rejection patterns at JACS:

• Applications of known methodology to new systems without new chemistry insight
• Natural product syntheses without strategic novelty (unless the target is especially complex or significant)
• Computational predictions without experimental validation
• Materials papers suited to ACS Applied Materials and Interfaces instead of JACS

Cover letter requirements

JACS editors read the cover letter to decide whether to bother reading the paper. A strong cover letter:

Opens with the chemical problem. Not background. Not the history of the field. The specific unresolved question or limitation that your paper addresses.

States the key result in one or two sentences. Be specific. "We report a palladium-catalyzed method for C-H borylation of arenes" is weaker than "We show that palladium catalysts with a new bidentate ligand achieve C-H borylation under ambient conditions, eliminating the directing group requirement that has constrained all prior methods."

Argues for general chemistry significance. Why does this matter beyond your immediate specialty? Mechanism that applies across classes? Technology with broad applications? Conceptual framework that changes how chemists think about a problem?

Suggests reviewers if appropriate. JACS submission forms have a reviewer suggestion field, but you can reinforce particularly relevant suggestions in the cover letter.

Keep it under one page. ACS style is direct. Don't summarize the supporting information. Don't describe each figure.

Manuscript formatting requirements

JACS uses a standard ACS format. The ACS manuscript template is available through ACS Paragon Plus and should be used.

Main text structure: Introduction, Results and Discussion, Conclusions, Acknowledgments, References, Supporting Information description.

Methods in main text vs. SI: Brief procedural descriptions go in the main text. Full experimental procedures, synthesis details, and characterization data go in the Supporting Information. Reviewers and editors expect the Supporting Information to be complete.

Reference format: ACS style. Numbered in order of citation. Author names in full or abbreviated by ACS convention.

Figures: Typically submitted as TIFF or EPS files. Minimum 300 DPI for photographs and 600 DPI for line art. ACS allows submission of embedded figures in the initial manuscript PDF. Separate figure files are required for accepted papers.

TOC graphic: The Table of Contents graphic is required and is not optional. It's a single figure, maximum 1.375 inches tall by 3.5 inches wide. It should visually communicate the key finding, not just repeat the title. Design it during the writing process, not at the last minute.

Characterization data requirements

This is where JACS submissions fall apart more than anywhere else. Incomplete characterization is one of the most common reasons for revision requests and delayed peer review.

For organic compounds:

• 1H NMR (complete integration and multiplicity assignment)
• 13C NMR (complete)
• High-resolution mass spectrometry (HRMS) for all new compounds
• IR if informative for the structural claim
• Melting point for crystalline solids

For inorganic and organometallic compounds:

• Multinuclear NMR appropriate to the metal system
• UV-vis, IR, EPR, Mossbauer, or other spectroscopic data as appropriate
• Elemental analysis OR X-ray crystal structure for new complexes

For X-ray crystal structures:

• CIF file deposited with the Cambridge Crystallographic Data Centre (CCDC) before submission
• CCDC deposition number cited in the manuscript
• Crystal structure images in standard ORTEP or MERCURY format

For computational papers:

• Full optimized coordinates (XYZ files) for all computed structures as Supporting Information
• Benchmark against experimental data or established methods

Missing any of these for new compounds will trigger a revision request. Check the ACS Author Guidelines for your specific subfield before submission.

Ethics, reporting, and data availability

Data availability: JACS requires a data availability statement. For computational data, specifying a repository (Zenodo, figshare) or describing data in the Supporting Information is standard. For synthetic chemistry, the Supporting Information typically contains all primary data.

Author contributions: CRediT (Contributor Roles Taxonomy) statements are encouraged but not yet mandatory at JACS (check current guidelines, as this is evolving across ACS journals).

Competing interests: All authors must disclose financial interests, patents, or relationships relevant to the work.

Submission workflow through ACS Paragon Plus

1. Log in or create an account at paragonplus.acs.org
2. Select JACS from the journal list
3. Choose article type
4. Upload manuscript PDF (single file with embedded figures acceptable at initial submission)
5. Upload Supporting Information files
6. Upload TOC graphic
7. Enter author information, affiliations, and ORCIDs for all authors
8. Enter suggested and excluded reviewers
9. Write or paste cover letter
10. Submit

You'll receive an acknowledgment email with your manuscript number within minutes. Track status through the Paragon Plus dashboard.

Final pre-submission checklist

• [ ] Cover letter: problem, key result, significance, reviewer suggestions
• [ ] Abstract under 200 words
• [ ] TOC graphic prepared (1.375 x 3.5 inches, self-explanatory)
• [ ] Full Supporting Information with all experimental procedures
• [ ] Complete 1H and 13C NMR for all new organic compounds
• [ ] HRMS for all new compounds
• [ ] CIF deposited with CCDC (if crystal structures included)
• [ ] Computational coordinates in SI (if computational paper)
• [ ] All figures minimum 300 DPI
• [ ] References in ACS format
• [ ] Author contributions declared
• [ ] Competing interests declared for all authors
• [ ] ORCIDs entered for all authors

Sources

• ACS Paragon Plus, JACS author guidelines (current as of March 2026)
• Clarivate Analytics, Journal Citation Reports 2024 (JIF 15.6, Q1)
• JACS journal overview
• JACS review time 2026
• JACS acceptance rate