How to format your references using the ACM Transactions on Algorithms citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for ACM Transactions on Algorithms (TALG). For a complete guide how to prepare your manuscript refer to the journal's instructions to authors.

Using reference management software

Typically you don't format your citations and bibliography by hand. The easiest way is to use a reference manager:

Paperpile	The citation style is built in and you can choose it in Settings > Citation Style or Paperpile > Citation Style in Google Docs.
EndNote	Download the output style file
Mendeley, Zotero, Papers, and others	The style is either built in or you can download a CSL file that is supported by most references management programs.
BibTeX	BibTeX syles are usually part of a LaTeX template. Check the instructions to authors if the publisher offers a LaTeX template for this journal.

Journal articles

Those examples are references to articles in scholarly journals and how they are supposed to appear in your bibliography.

Not all journals organize their published articles in volumes and issues, so these fields are optional. Some electronic journals do not provide a page range, but instead list an article identifier. In a case like this it's safe to use the article identifier instead of the page range.

A journal article with 1 author

[1]

Hannah Hoag. 2004. Coming back to life Montreal. Nature 430, 6996 (July 2004), 274–275.

A journal article with 2 authors

[1]

Eric M. Simmons and John F. Hartwig. 2012. Catalytic functionalization of unactivated primary C-H bonds directed by an alcohol. Nature 483, 7387 (February 2012), 70–73.

A journal article with 3 authors

[1]

David Storch, Petr Keil, and Walter Jetz. 2012. Universal species-area and endemics-area relationships at continental scales. Nature 488, 7409 (August 2012), 78–81.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

[1]

Yaron Y. Levy, Stéphane Mesnage, Joshua S. Mylne, Anthony R. Gendall, and Caroline Dean. 2002. Multiple roles of Arabidopsis VRN1 in vernalization and flowering time control. Science 297, 5579 (July 2002), 243–246.

Books and book chapters

Here are examples of references for authored and edited books as well as book chapters.

An authored book

[1]

Wolfgang Jank and Galit Shmueli. 2010. Modeling Online Auctions. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ.

An edited book

[1]

Eric Lichtfouse (Ed.). 2012. Organic Fertilisation, Soil Quality and Human Health. Springer Netherlands, Dordrecht.

A chapter in an edited book

[1]

Emre Cevikcan and Alp Ustundag. 2013. Decision Making for Determining the Implementation Level of RFID Projects. In The Value of RFID: Benefits vs. Costs, Alp Ustundag (ed.). Springer, London, 53–67.

Web sites

Sometimes references to web sites should appear directly in the text rather than in the bibliography. Refer to the Instructions to authors for ACM Transactions on Algorithms.

Blog post

[1]

Josh Davis. 2015. Owl-Inspired Tech Could Make Wind Turbines Quieter. IFLScience.

Reports

This example shows the general structure used for government reports, technical reports, and scientific reports. If you can't locate the report number then it might be better to cite the report as a book. For reports it is usually not individual people that are credited as authors, but a governmental department or agency like "U. S. Food and Drug Administration" or "National Cancer Institute".

Government report

[1]

Government Accountability Office. 2005. Commercial Aviation: Survey of Small Community Air Service Grantees and Applicants, an E-supplement to GAO-06-21. U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC.

Theses and dissertations

Theses including Ph.D. dissertations, Master's theses or Bachelor theses follow the basic format outlined below.

Doctoral dissertation

[1]

Katrina S. Warner. 2014. The narrative structure of children’s books used in language therapy: An analysis. Doctoral dissertation. California State University, Long Beach, Long Beach, CA.

News paper articles

Unlike scholarly journals, news papers do not usually have a volume and issue number. Instead, the full date and page number is required for a correct reference.

New York Times article

[1]

Ben Kenigsberg. 2017. Band Aid. New York Times, C8.

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by sequential numbers in square brackets:

This sentence cites one reference [2].
This sentence cites two references [2, 4].
This sentence cites four references [2, 5, 7, 8].

About the journal

Full journal title	ACM Transactions on Algorithms
Abbreviation	ACM Trans. Algorithms
ISSN (print)	1549-6325
ISSN (online)	1549-6333
Scope