How to format your references using the Journal of the ACM citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Journal of the ACM (JACM). 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]

Neil Savage. 2014. Clotting factors: Stretching time. Nature 515, 7528 (November 2014), S162-4.

A journal article with 2 authors

[1]

Shanwu Tang and Daven C. Presgraves. 2009. Evolution of the Drosophila nuclear pore complex results in multiple hybrid incompatibilities. Science 323, 5915 (February 2009), 779–782.

A journal article with 3 authors

[1]

Michael D. Stenner, Daniel J. Gauthier, and Mark A. Neifeld. 2003. The speed of information in a “fast-light” optical medium. Nature 425, 6959 (October 2003), 695–698.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

[1]

Joshua D. Woodard, Bruce J. Sherrick, Deborah M. Atwood, Robert Blair, Greg Fogel, Nicholas Goeser, Barry Gold, Josette Lewis, Carl Mattson, Jim Moseley, Collin O’Mara, John Piotti, Bill Salas, Lynn Scarlett, Kristin Weeks Duncanson, and Fred Yoder. 2018. The power of agricultural data. Science 362, 6413 (October 2018), 410–411.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

[1]

bauforumstahl e.V. 2011. Beispiele zur Bemessung von Stahltragwerken nach DIN EN 1993 Eurocode 3. Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim, Germany.

An edited book

[1]

Suveen N. Mathaudhu, Wim H. Sillekens, Neale R. Neelameggham, and Norbert Hort (Eds.). 2016. Magnesium Technology 2012. Springer International Publishing, Cham.

A chapter in an edited book

[1]

Dariusz Rafał Augustyn. 2015. Query Workload Aware Multi-histogram Based on Equi-width Sub-histograms for Selectivity Estimations of Range Queries. In Beyond Databases, Architectures and Structures: 11th International Conference, BDAS 2015, Ustroń, Poland, May 26-29, 2015, Proceedings, Stanisław Kozielski, Dariusz Mrozek, Paweł Kasprowski, Bożena Małysiak-Mrozek and Daniel Kostrzewa (eds.). Springer International Publishing, Cham, 47–59.

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 Journal of the ACM.

Blog post

[1]

Tom Hale. 2016. “Scarface,” The Beloved Bear Of Yellowstone Park, Has Been Killed. IFLScience. Retrieved October 30, 2018 from https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/scarface-beloved-bear-yellowstone-park-has-been-shot/

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. 1991. Titan IV Launch Vehicle: Restructured Program Could Reduce Fiscal Year 1992 Funding Needs. 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]

Katrina Fengler. 2017. Everyday Aesthetics and the Environmental Significance of Everyday Aesthetics: A High School Art Unit of Instruction Promoting Positive Attitudinal Changes towards the Environment. 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]

John Schwartz and Alan Blinder. 2017. Houston Faces Urgent Task: Moving Mountains of Storm Debris. New York Times, A13.

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 [2, 5, 6, 8].

About the journal

Full journal title	Journal of the ACM
Abbreviation	J. ACM
ISSN (print)	0004-5411
ISSN (online)	1557-735X
Scope	Artificial Intelligence Hardware and Architecture Information Systems Software Control and Systems Engineering