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

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

Freeman Dyson. 2005. Dynamic universe. Nature 435, 7045 (June 2005), 1033.

A journal article with 2 authors

[1]

S. Savaglio and V. Carbone. 2000. Scaling in athletic world records. Nature 404, 6775 (March 2000), 244.

A journal article with 3 authors

[1]

Simone Migliari, Rob Fender, and Mariano Méndez. 2002. Iron emission lines from extended x-ray jets in SS 433: reheating of atomic nuclei. Science 297, 5587 (September 2002), 1673–1676.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

[1]

Quarraisha Abdool Karim, Salim S. Abdool Karim, Janet A. Frohlich, Anneke C. Grobler, Cheryl Baxter, Leila E. Mansoor, Ayesha B. M. Kharsany, Sengeziwe Sibeko, Koleka P. Mlisana, Zaheen Omar, Tanuja N. Gengiah, Silvia Maarschalk, Natasha Arulappan, Mukelisiwe Mlotshwa, Lynn Morris, Douglas Taylor, and CAPRISA 004 Trial Group. 2010. Effectiveness and safety of tenofovir gel, an antiretroviral microbicide, for the prevention of HIV infection in women. Science 329, 5996 (September 2010), 1168–1174.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

[1]

Peter J. Cragg. 2006. A Practical Guide to Supramolecular Chemistry. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, Chichester, UK.

An edited book

[1]

Aitziber L. Cortajarena and Tijana Z. Grove (Eds.). 2016. Protein-based Engineered Nanostructures. Springer International Publishing, Cham.

A chapter in an edited book

[1]

Wilson Acchar and Eduardo J. V. Dultra. 2015. Coffee Industry in Brazil. In Ceramic Materials from Coffee Bagasse Ash Waste, Eduardo J. V. Dultra (ed.). Springer International Publishing, Cham, 23–30.

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 Database Systems.

Blog post

[1]

Elise Andrew. 2015. Scientists Use The Power Of Acoustics For Real-Life Levitation. 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. 1976. Audit of Accounts at the U.S. Army Research and Development Command. 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]

Maryanne Alderson. 2017. Procedural Justice and Police Encounters with Homeless Injecting Drug Users. 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]

Susan Dominus. 2013. After The Dark, The ‘Dream.’ New York Times, AR1.

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 [3, 6–8].

About the journal

Full journal title	ACM Transactions on Database Systems
ISSN (print)	0362-5915
ISSN (online)	1557-4644
Scope	Information Systems