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]

D. M. Hunten. 2001. Planetary science. Clues to the Martian atmosphere. Science 294, 5548 (November 2001), 1843–1844.

A journal article with 2 authors

[1]

Richard S. Ostfeld and Felicia Keesing. 2004. Ecology. Oh the locusts sang, then they dropped dead. Science 306, 5701 (November 2004), 1488–1489.

A journal article with 3 authors

[1]

John F. Hoffecker, Scott A. Elias, and Dennis H. O’Rourke. 2014. Anthropology. Out of Beringia? Science 343, 6174 (February 2014), 979–980.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

[1]

Gad Getz, Holger Höfling, Jill P. Mesirov, Todd R. Golub, Matthew Meyerson, Robert Tibshirani, and Eric S. Lander. 2007. Comment on “The consensus coding sequences of human breast and colorectal cancers.” Science 317, 5844 (September 2007), 1500.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

[1]

Rolando Antonio Carrasco and Martin Johnston. 2008. Non-Binary Error Control Coding for Wireless Communication and Data Storage. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, Chichester, UK.

An edited book

[1]

Mary Florentine, Arthur N. Popper, and Richard R. Fay (Eds.). 2011. Loudness. Springer, New York, NY.

A chapter in an edited book

[1]

Angela Vick, Amaresh Vydyanathan, Tarang Safi, and Karina Gritsenko. 2015. Perioperative Considerations in Pharmacology. In Essentials of Pharmacology for Anesthesia, Pain Medicine, and Critical Care, Alan David Kaye, Adam M. Kaye and Richard D. Urman (eds.). Springer, New York, NY, 87–99.

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]

Stephen Luntz. 2014. Jupiter’s Great Red Spot Is Shrinking. 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. 1996. General Government Information Systems Issue Area: Active Assignments. 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]

Elizabeth Flores. 2010. An exploratory study on widows’ experiences following the loss of their spouse. 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]

James Card. 2017. Breathtaking Beauty. New York Times, TR7.

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 [5–8].

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