How to format your references using the ACM Transactions on Mathematical Software citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for ACM Transactions on Mathematical Software (TOMS). 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]

Jon Woodhead. 2015. Earth science: Mixing it up in the mantle. Nature 517, 7534 (January 2015), 275–276.

A journal article with 2 authors

[1]

Susanne Paland and Michael Lynch. 2006. Transitions to asexuality result in excess amino acid substitutions. Science 311, 5763 (February 2006), 990–992.

A journal article with 3 authors

[1]

Siddhesh S. Kamat, Howard J. Williams, and Frank M. Raushel. 2011. Intermediates in the transformation of phosphonates to phosphate by bacteria. Nature 480, 7378 (November 2011), 570–573.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

[1]

Szabolcs Oláh, Miklós Füle, Gergely Komlósi, Csaba Varga, Rita Báldi, Pál Barzó, and Gábor Tamás. 2009. Regulation of cortical microcircuits by unitary GABA-mediated volume transmission. Nature 461, 7268 (October 2009), 1278–1281.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

[1]

Volker Kühn. 2006. Wireless Communications over MIMO Channels. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, Chichester, UK.

An edited book

[1]

Shinsuke Kato. 2012. Ventilating Cities: Air-flow Criteria for Healthy and Comfortable Urban Living. Springer Netherlands, Dordrecht.

A chapter in an edited book

[1]

Stephen Leong, Justin Call, Alex A. Adjei, and Wells Messersmith. 2011. Phase I Clinical Trials with Anticancer Agents. In Principles of Anticancer Drug Development, Elizabeth Garrett-Mayer (ed.). Springer, New York, NY, 117–139.

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 Mathematical Software.

Blog post

[1]

Elise Andrew. 2015. Scientists Discover Fundamental Property of Light – 150 Years After Maxwell. IFLScience. Retrieved October 30, 2018 from https://www.iflscience.com/physics/scientists-discover-fundamental-property-light-150-years-after-maxwell/

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. 2015. Drug-Impaired Driving: Additional Support Needed for Public Awareness Initiatives. 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]

Betsy P. Humphreys. 2013. The Role of Developmental Screening Practices in Early Diagnosis of Autism Spectrum Disorders: An Analysis of All-Payer Claims Data in New Hampshire. Doctoral dissertation. University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC.

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]

Mary Billard. 2011. In Schools, Yoga Without the Spiritual. New York Times, MB4.

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 [3,4].
This sentence cites four references [4,6–8].

About the journal

Full journal title	ACM Transactions on Mathematical Software
Abbreviation	ACM Trans. Math. Softw.
ISSN (print)	0098-3500
ISSN (online)	1557-7295
Scope