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]

Jason M. Tylianakis. 2013. Ecology. The global plight of pollinators. Science 339, 6127 (March 2013), 1532–1533.

A journal article with 2 authors

[1]

Molly Weaver and Mark A. Krasnow. 2008. Dual origin of tissue-specific progenitor cells in Drosophila tracheal remodeling. Science 321, 5895 (September 2008), 1496–1499.

A journal article with 3 authors

[1]

Benjamin D. Auerbach, Emily K. Osterweil, and Mark F. Bear. 2011. Mutations causing syndromic autism define an axis of synaptic pathophysiology. Nature 480, 7375 (November 2011), 63–68.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

[1]

Peng Zhang, Koichiro Yaji, Takahiro Hashimoto, Yuichi Ota, Takeshi Kondo, Kozo Okazaki, Zhijun Wang, Jinsheng Wen, G. D. Gu, Hong Ding, and Shik Shin. 2018. Observation of topological superconductivity on the surface of an iron-based superconductor. Science 360, 6385 (April 2018), 182–186.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

[1]

Brian G. Flood. 2013. Wealth Exposed. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ.

An edited book

[1]

Francisco Duarte Moura Neto. 2013. An Introduction to Inverse Problems with Applications. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg.

A chapter in an edited book

[1]

Pey-Chang Kent Lin and Sunil P. Khatri. 2014. Predictor Ranking using Modified Zhegalkin Functions. In Logic Synthesis for Genetic Diseases: Modeling Disease Behavior Using Boolean Networks, Sunil P. Khatri (ed.). Springer, New York, NY, 53–74.

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]

Danielle Andrew. 2016. Here’s What The Maximum Amount Of Caffeine You Should Be Drinking In A Day Looks Like. 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. 2004. Electronic Government: Federal Agencies Continue to Invest in Smart Card Technology. 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]

Kristen A. Slayton. 2013. A psychoeducational support group for families of youth experiencing symptoms of schizophrenia: A grant proposal. 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]

Ben Protess. 2017. Trump Picks an Overseer of Derivatives Trading. New York Times, A11.

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 [4–6,8].

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