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]

Nancy B. Dise. 2009. Environmental science. Peatland response to global change. Science 326, 5954 (November 2009), 810–811.

A journal article with 2 authors

[1]

J. D. Richter and W. E. Theurkauf. 2001. Development. The message is in the translation. Science 293, 5527 (July 2001), 60–62.

A journal article with 3 authors

[1]

A. Hasnaoui, H. Van Swygenhoven, and P. M. Derlet. 2003. Dimples on nanocrystalline fracture surfaces as evidence for shear plane formation. Science 300, 5625 (June 2003), 1550–1552.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

[1]

Brooks King-Casas, Damon Tomlin, Cedric Anen, Colin F. Camerer, Steven R. Quartz, and P. Read Montague. 2005. Getting to know you: reputation and trust in a two-person economic exchange. Science 308, 5718 (April 2005), 78–83.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

[1]

Doug McLean. 2012. Understanding Aerodynamics. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, Chichester, UK.

An edited book

[1]

Paul H. Bezandry. 2011. Almost Periodic Stochastic Processes. Springer, New York, NY.

A chapter in an edited book

[1]

Enid Gilbert-Barness, Diane E. Spicer, and Thora S. Steffensen. 2014. The Placenta. In Handbook of Pediatric Autopsy Pathology, Diane E. Spicer and Thora S. Steffensen (eds.). Springer, New York, NY, 125–167.

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]

Elise Andrew. 2015. How Neutrinos, Which Barely Exist, Just Ran Off With Another Nobel Prize. 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. 1987. Natural Gas Regulation: Pipeline Transportation Under FERC Order 436. 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]

George A. Sparks. 2008. Charismatic leadership: An exploratory investigation of the techniques of influence. Doctoral dissertation. Capella University, Minneapolis, MN.

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]

Linda Greenhouse. 2007. Uncertainty Now in a Golden Youth’s Trajectory. 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, 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