How to format your references using the ACM Transactions on Programming Languages and Systems citation style

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

Xavier Pi-Sunyer. 2003. A clinical view of the obesity problem. Science 299, 5608 (February 2003), 859–860.

A journal article with 2 authors

[1]

Anthony L. Forget and Stephen C. Kowalczykowski. 2012. Single-molecule imaging of DNA pairing by RecA reveals a three-dimensional homology search. Nature 482, 7385 (February 2012), 423–427.

A journal article with 3 authors

[1]

Fereshteh S. Nugent, Esther C. Penick, and Julie A. Kauer. 2007. Opioids block long-term potentiation of inhibitory synapses. Nature 446, 7139 (April 2007), 1086–1090.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

[1]

N. V. Fedoroff, D. S. Battisti, R. N. Beachy, P. J. M. Cooper, D. A. Fischhoff, C. N. Hodges, V. C. Knauf, D. Lobell, B. J. Mazur, D. Molden, M. P. Reynolds, P. C. Ronald, M. W. Rosegrant, P. A. Sanchez, A. Vonshak, and J-K Zhu. 2010. Radically rethinking agriculture for the 21st century. Science 327, 5967 (February 2010), 833–834.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

[1]

Johan Schoukens, Rik Pintelon, and Yves Rolain. 2012. Mastering System Identification in 100 Exercises. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ.

An edited book

[1]

Kristie L. Ebi, Ian Burton, and Glenn R. McGregor (Eds.). 2009. Biometeorology for Adaptation to Climate Variability and Change. Springer Netherlands, Dordrecht.

A chapter in an edited book

[1]

Scott W. Mattner. 2006. THE IMPACT OF PATHOGENS ON PLANT INTERFERENCE AND ALLELOPATHY. In Allelochemicals: Biological Control of Plant Pathogens and Diseases, INDERJIT and K. G. Mukerji (eds.). Springer Netherlands, Dordrecht, 79–101.

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 Programming Languages and Systems.

Blog post

[1]

Elise Andrew. 2015. The Public Must Speak Up About Gene Editing – Beyond Embryo Modification. 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. 2011. Job Access and Reverse Commute Program: Progress Made in Using Funds and Stakeholder Views on Proposed Program Changes. 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]

Samuel Lee. 2013. Control-display alignment modulates dimensional salience. 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]

George Vecsey. 2011. The Dangerous Cocoon Of King Football. New York Times, B16.

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 Programming Languages and Systems
Abbreviation	ACM Trans. Program. Lang. Syst.
ISSN (print)	0164-0925
ISSN (online)	1558-4593
Scope