How to format your references using the ACM Transactions on Sensor Networks citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for ACM Transactions on Sensor Networks (TOSN). 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]

Kevin J. Gaston. 2010. Ecology. Valuing common species. Science 327, 5962 (January 2010), 154–155.

A journal article with 2 authors

[1]

Christopher Badcock and Bernard Crespi. 2008. Battle of the sexes may set the brain. Nature 454, 7208 (August 2008), 1054–1055.

A journal article with 3 authors

[1]

Jouni Kainulainen, Christoph Federrath, and Thomas Henning. 2014. Unfolding the laws of star formation: the density distribution of molecular clouds. Science 344, 6180 (April 2014), 183–185.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

[1]

Tibor Bukovinszky, F. J. Frank van Veen, Yde Jongema, and Marcel Dicke. 2008. Direct and indirect effects of resource quality on food web structure. Science 319, 5864 (February 2008), 804–807.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

[1]

Marvelle Brown and Tracey J. Cutler. 2012. Haematology Nursing. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., West Sussex, UK.

An edited book

[1]

Henrik Gudmundsson. 2016. Sustainable Transportation: Indicators, Frameworks, and Performance Management. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg.

A chapter in an edited book

[1]

Nguyen Lu Dang Khoa and Sanjay Chawla. 2012. Large Scale Spectral Clustering Using Resistance Distance and Spielman-Teng Solvers. In Discovery Science: 15th International Conference, DS 2012, Lyon, France, October 29-31, 2012. Proceedings, Jean-Gabriel Ganascia, Philippe Lenca and Jean-Marc Petit (eds.). Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, 7–21.

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 Sensor Networks.

Blog post

[1]

Elise Andrew. 2014. Impacts, Extinctions And Climate In The Search For Life Elsewhere. 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. 2001. D.C. Tuition Assistance Grants: Program May Increase College Choices, but a Few Program Procedures May Hinder Grant Receipt for Some Residents. 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]

Maroun Medlej. 2017. Assessing the Probability of Prototyping Success in Systems Acquisitions (APOPS). Doctoral dissertation. George Washington University, Washington, DC.

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]

Tyler Cowen. 2014. From Colonial India, Lessons for a Changed Economy. New York Times, BU4.

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, 5, 7, 8].

About the journal

Full journal title	ACM Transactions on Sensor Networks
Abbreviation	ACM Trans. Sens. Netw.
ISSN (print)	1550-4859
ISSN (online)	1550-4867
Scope