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

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for ACM Transactions on Computer Systems (TOCS). 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]

Jason Clay. 2011. Freeze the footprint of food. Nature 475, 7356 (July 2011), 287–289.

A journal article with 2 authors

[1]

Thomas R. Insel and Bruce N. Cuthbert. 2015. Medicine. Brain disorders? Precisely. Science 348, 6234 (May 2015), 499–500.

A journal article with 3 authors

[1]

Heather N. Cartwright, John A. Humphries, and Laurie G. Smith. 2009. PAN1: a receptor-like protein that promotes polarization of an asymmetric cell division in maize. Science 323, 5914 (January 2009), 649–651.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

[1]

K. Kim, A. Doi, B. Wen, K. Ng, R. Zhao, P. Cahan, J. Kim, M. J. Aryee, H. Ji, L. I. R. Ehrlich, A. Yabuuchi, A. Takeuchi, K. C. Cunniff, H. Hongguang, S. McKinney-Freeman, O. Naveiras, T. J. Yoon, R. A. Irizarry, N. Jung, J. Seita, J. Hanna, P. Murakami, R. Jaenisch, R. Weissleder, S. H. Orkin, I. L. Weissman, A. P. Feinberg, and G. Q. Daley. 2010. Epigenetic memory in induced pluripotent stem cells. Nature 467, 7313 (September 2010), 285–290.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

[1]

Nils Erik Gilhus, Michael P. Barnes, and Michael Brainin. 2010. European Handbook of Neurological Management. Wiley-Blackwell, Oxford, UK.

An edited book

[1]

Anthony Brabazon and Michael O’Neill (Eds.). 2008. Natural Computing in Computational Finance (X ed.). Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg.

A chapter in an edited book

[1]

Ole Henry Halvorsen and Douglas Clarke. 2011. The I/O Kit Framework. In OS X and iOS Kernel Programming, Douglas Clarke (ed.). Apress, Berkeley, CA, 51–68.

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 Computer Systems.

Blog post

[1]

Elise Andrew. 2014. 13.7 Billion Years Of Galaxy Formation In 46 Seconds. IFLScience. Retrieved October 30, 2018 from https://www.iflscience.com/space/137-billion-years-galaxy-formation-46-seconds/

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. 2011. Information Technology: Critical Factors Underlying Successful Major Acquisitions. 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]

Colleen Claire Naughton. 2013. Assessing Appropriate Technology Handwashing Stations in Mali, West Africa. Doctoral dissertation. University of South Florida, Tampa, FL.

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]

Linda Qiu. 2017. Election Influence, Separate and Unequal. New York Times, A16.

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 [4–6, 8].

About the journal

Full journal title	ACM Transactions on Computer Systems
Abbreviation	ACM Trans. Comput. Syst.
ISSN (print)	0734-2071
ISSN (online)	1557-7333
Scope