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]

J. Adkins. 2001. Paleoclimate. Dating--vive la différence. Science 294, 5548 (November 2001), 1844–1845.

A journal article with 2 authors

[1]

Victor Galitski and Ian B. Spielman. 2013. Spin-orbit coupling in quantum gases. Nature 494, 7435 (February 2013), 49–54.

A journal article with 3 authors

[1]

Rosamund Daw, Joshua Finkelstein, and Magdalena Helmer. 2012. Chemistry and energy. Nature 488, 7411 (August 2012), 293.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

[1]

Jianping Hu, Maria Aguirre, Charles Peto, Jose Alonso, Joseph Ecker, and Joanne Chory. 2002. A role for peroxisomes in photomorphogenesis and development of Arabidopsis. Science 297, 5580 (July 2002), 405–409.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

[1]

Ursula Eicker. 2005. Solar Technologies for Buildings. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, Chichester, UK.

An edited book

[1]

Ofer Strichman and Stefan Szeider (Eds.). 2010. Theory and Applications of Satisfiability Testing – SAT 2010: 13th International Conference, SAT 2010, Edinburgh, UK, July 11-14, 2010. Proceedings. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg.

A chapter in an edited book

[1]

Michael F. O’Rourke. 2015. Arteriosclerosis/Large Artery Disease. In Arterial Disorders: Definition, Clinical Manifestations, Mechanisms and Therapeutic Approaches, Adel Berbari and Giuseppe Mancia (eds.). Springer International Publishing, Cham, 57–68.

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]

Katy Evans. 2017. The World’s Healthiest Hearts Belong To The Tsimane People Of Bolivia. 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. 1988. Competition: Information on Federally Funded Research and Development Centers. 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]

Roy D. Wood. 2010. Correlation of conductor leadership style, musician employment status, organizational participation to orchestra musician job satisfaction. Doctoral dissertation. University of Phoenix, Phoenix, AZ.

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]

George Vecsey. 2012. Pondering Curses at Chavez Ravine. New York Times, SP2.

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, 6, 8].

About the journal

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