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]

M. Susan Lozier. 2010. Deconstructing the conveyor belt. Science 328, 5985 (June 2010), 1507–1511.

A journal article with 2 authors

[1]

Snigdhadip Dey and Amitabh Joshi. 2013. Effects of constant immigration on the dynamics and persistence of stable and unstable Drosophila populations. Sci. Rep. 3, (2013), 1405.

A journal article with 3 authors

[1]

Y. Shen, R. Buick, and D. E. Canfield. 2001. Isotopic evidence for microbial sulphate reduction in the early Archaean era. Nature 410, 6824 (March 2001), 77–81.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

[1]

Ji-Joon Song, Stephanie K. Smith, Gregory J. Hannon, and Leemor Joshua-Tor. 2004. Crystal structure of Argonaute and its implications for RISC slicer activity. Science 305, 5689 (September 2004), 1434–1437.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

[1]

Kevin J. Davey. 2014. Building Winning Algorithmic Trading Systems. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ.

An edited book

[1]

Katta G. Murty (Ed.). 2015. Case Studies in Operations Research: Applications of Optimal Decision Making. Springer, New York, NY.

A chapter in an edited book

[1]

Ravi P. Agarwal, Kanishka Perera, and Sandra Pinelas. 2011. Set Theory in the Complex Plane. In An Introduction to Complex Analysis, Kanishka Perera and Sandra Pinelas (eds.). Springer US, Boston, MA, 20–27.

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. 2014. Scientists Ready To Witness Milky Way’s Black Hole Consume Giant Gas Cloud. IFLScience. Retrieved October 30, 2018 from https://www.iflscience.com/space/watch-out-black-hole-hungry/

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. 2013. Preliminary Results of Work on FAA Facility Conditions and Workplace Safety. 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]

Adrienne M. Dorrance. 2008. The Role of the Partial Tandem Duplication of MLL (MLL PTD) in Leukemogenesis. Doctoral dissertation. Ohio State University, Columbus, OH.

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 Feeney. 2008. Cuban Comfort. New York Times, NJ14.

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 [3,4,6,8].

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

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