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

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

Herb Brody. 2014. Cancer. Nature 509, 7502 (May 2014), S49.

A journal article with 2 authors

[1]

Robert Sablowski and Nicholas P. Harberd. 2005. Plant sciences. Plant genes on steroids. Science 307, 5715 (March 2005), 1569–1570.

A journal article with 3 authors

[1]

Xingxing Li, Jin Zhao, and Jinlong Yang. 2013. Semihydrogenated BN sheet: a promising visible-light driven photocatalyst for water splitting. Sci. Rep. 3, (2013), 1858.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

[1]

C. T. Russell, T. L. Zhang, M. Delva, W. Magnes, R. J. Strangeway, and H. Y. Wei. 2007. Lightning on Venus inferred from whistler-mode waves in the ionosphere. Nature 450, 7170 (November 2007), 661–662.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

[1]

Klaus Sattler. 2005. Thermische Trennverfahren. Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim, FRG.

An edited book

[1]

Suveen N. Mathaudhu, Alan A. Luo, Neale R. Neelameggham, Eric A. Nyberg, and Wim H. Sillekens (Eds.). 2016. Essential Readings in Magnesium Technology. Springer International Publishing, Cham.

A chapter in an edited book

[1]

Evan Chou, C. Sinan Güntürk, Felix Krahmer, Rayan Saab, and Özgür Yılmaz. 2015. Noise-Shaping Quantization Methods for Frame-Based and Compressive Sampling Systems. In Sampling Theory, a Renaissance: Compressive Sensing and Other Developments, Götz E. Pfander (ed.). Springer International Publishing, Cham, 157–184.

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 Information Systems.

Blog post

[1]

Elise Andrew. 2015. Do Animals Feel Pain Like We Do? IFLScience. Retrieved October 30, 2018 from https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/do-animals-feel-pain-we-do/

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. 2004. Pipeline Safety: Preliminary Information on the Office of Pipeline Safety’s Actions to Strengthen Its Enforcement Program. 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]

Michael Lemay. 2009. Understanding the mechanism of panel attrition. Doctoral dissertation. University of Maryland, College Park, College Park, MD.

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 M. Greenhill. 2006. Don’t Dumb Down the Army. New York Times, A23.

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, 6–8].

About the journal

Full journal title	ACM Transactions on Information Systems
Abbreviation	ACM Trans. Inf. Syst.
ISSN (print)	1046-8188
ISSN (online)	1558-2868
Scope