Academic writing

Hey /book/ I come from /lit/ and I had a question on an MLA paper.  How do I tell the reader that a word will be abbreviated?  Here is an example: The Central African Republic (henceforth known as CAR)... Is that Correct?

The standard is to simply put the abbreviation following the phrase.  It is commonly understood that it is the abbreviation, and so there is no need to explicitly state so.

The Central African Republic (CAR)...