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

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

Robert O. Fox. 2009. Obituary: Frederic Richards (1925-2009). Nature 457, 7232 (February 2009), 976.

A journal article with 2 authors

[1]

Leif D. Jacobson and John M. Herbert. 2011. Comment on “Does the hydrated electron occupy a cavity?” Science 331, 6023 (March 2011), 1387; author reply 1387.

A journal article with 3 authors

[1]

Xunlai Yuan, Shuhai Xiao, and T. N. Taylor. 2005. Lichen-like symbiosis 600 million years ago. Science 308, 5724 (May 2005), 1017–1020.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

[1]

Sibylle Gaisser, Michael M. Hopkins, Kathleen Liddell, Eleni Zika, and Dolores Ibarreta. 2009. The phantom menace of gene patents. Nature 458, 7237 (March 2009), 407–408.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

[1]

Scott A. Morris. 2011. Food and Package Engineering. Wiley-Blackwell, Oxford, UK.

An edited book

[1]

Stefano Ruggeri (Ed.). 2015. Human Rights in European Criminal Law: New Developments in European Legislation and Case Law after the Lisbon Treaty. Springer International Publishing, Cham.

A chapter in an edited book

[1]

Stephanie Jones and James F. Woglom. 2016. Overcoming Nomos. In On Mutant Pedagogies: Seeking Justice and Drawing Change in Teacher Education, James F. Woglom (ed.). SensePublishers, Rotterdam, 49–69.

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 Embedded Computing Systems.

Blog post

[1]

Elise Andrew. 2015. Space Salad Could Soon Be Eaten By Astronauts Aboard The International Space Station. IFLScience. Retrieved October 30, 2018 from https://www.iflscience.com/space/space-salad-could-soon-be-eaten-astronauts-onboard-international-space-station/

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. 1999. Year 2000 Computing Crisis: Status of Airports’ Efforts to Deal with Date Change Problem. 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]

William B. Davidson. 2010. High school athletics and the “whole adolescent”: A case study of three urban high schools. 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]

John Eligon. 2017. Ferguson Voters Return a White Mayor to Office. New York Times, A11.

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 Embedded Computing Systems
Abbreviation	ACM Trans. Embed. Comput. Syst.
ISSN (print)	1539-9087
ISSN (online)	1558-3465
Scope	Hardware and Architecture Software