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

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for ACM Transactions on Computation Theory (TOCT). 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	Find the style here: output styles overview
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]

Colin F. Camerer. 2003. Psychology and economics. Strategizing in the brain. Science 300, 5626 (June 2003), 1673–1675.

A journal article with 2 authors

[1]

Chris Dye and Nigel Gay. 2003. Epidemiology. Modeling the SARS epidemic. Science 300, 5627 (June 2003), 1884–1885.

A journal article with 3 authors

[1]

Satinder K. Singh, Atsuko Yamashita, and Eric Gouaux. 2007. Antidepressant binding site in a bacterial homologue of neurotransmitter transporters. Nature 448, 7156 (August 2007), 952–956.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

[1]

Hsiu-Ying Chung, Michelle B. Weinberger, Jonathan B. Levine, Robert W. Cumberland, Abby Kavner, Jenn-Ming Yang, Sarah H. Tolbert, and Richard B. Kaner. 2007. Synthesis of ultra-incompressible superhard rhenium diboride at ambient pressure. Science 316, 5823 (April 2007), 436–439.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

[1]

Gavin Reid. 2011. Dyslexia. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, Chichester, UK.

An edited book

[1]

Francesca D. Ciccarelli and István Miklós (Eds.). 2009. Comparative Genomics: International Workshop, RECOMB-CG 2009, Budapest, Hungary, September 27-29, 2009. Proceedings. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg.

A chapter in an edited book

[1]

Manuel Koschuch, Matthias Hudler, and Michael Krüger. 2012. The Price of Security: A Detailed Comparison of the TLS Handshake Performance on Embedded Devices When Using Elliptic Curve Cryptography and RSA. In e-Business and Telecommunications: 7th International Joint Conference, ICETE 2010, Athens, Greece, July 26-28, 2010, Revised Selected Papers, Mohammad S. Obaidat, George A. Tsihrintzis and Joaquim Filipe (eds.). Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, 71–83.

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 Computation Theory.

Blog post

[1]

Josh Davis. 2015. 20 Million-Year-Old Salamander Found Preserved In Amber. 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. 2009. Higher Education and Disability: Education Needs a Coordinated Approach to Improve Its Assistance to Schools in Supporting Students. 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]

Kelley Brawley. 2010. A nutrition and physical activity curriculum for pregnant women. 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]

Kelly Crow. 2001. Physically Unscathed, But Hardly Untouched. New York Times, 144.

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 Computation Theory
ISSN (print)	1942-3454
ISSN (online)	1942-3462
Scope

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