How to format your references using the ACM Transactions on Computation Theory citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for ACM Transactions on Computation Theory (TOCT). 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 reference managers.
BibTeX	BibTeX styles 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]

Georgy Koentges. 2008. Evolution of anatomy and gene control. Nature 451, 7179 (February 2008), 658–663.

A journal article with 2 authors

[1]

Michael L. Roderick and Graham D. Farquhar. 2002. The cause of decreased pan evaporation over the past 50 years. Science 298, 5597 (November 2002), 1410–1411.

A journal article with 3 authors

[1]

Wade M. Hicks, Minlee Kim, and James E. Haber. 2010. Increased mutagenesis and unique mutation signature associated with mitotic gene conversion. Science 329, 5987 (July 2010), 82–85.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

[1]

L. C. Smith, G. M. MacDonald, A. A. Velichko, D. W. Beilman, O. K. Borisova, K. E. Frey, K. V. Kremenetski, and Y. Sheng. 2004. Siberian peatlands a net carbon sink and global methane source since the early Holocene. Science 303, 5656 (January 2004), 353–356.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

[1]

Linda Wagner-Martin. 2012. A History of American Literature. Blackwell Publishing Ltd, Oxford.

An edited book

[1]

Charles Lowery, Anthony Walker, and Cornell Thomas (Eds.). 2016. Un-Democratic Acts: New Departures for Dialogues in Society and Schools. SensePublishers, Rotterdam.

A chapter in an edited book

[1]

Plamen Petkov. 2006. Electrode-Limited Currents in Thin Ternary Chalcogenide Films. In Functional Properties of Nanostructured Materials, Rainer Kassing, Plamen Petkov, Wilhelm Kulisch and Cyril Popov (eds.). Springer Netherlands, Dordrecht, 57–72.

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 Computation Theory.

Blog post

[1]

Elise Andrew. 2014. Chronic Pot Smoking Associated With Reduced Gray Matter, But Increased Connections. 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. 1991. Working Comfortably With Video Display Terminals. 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]

Ana Cristina Torres Garcia. 2015. The Impact of Health Insurance Coverage on the Use of Preventive Health Services and Healthy Behaviors: Evidence from Mexico’s Public Health Insurance Program “Seguro Popular.” 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]

John F. Wasik. 2016. Helping Hand for Start-Ups From Those Who’ve Been There Before. New York Times, B2.

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 Computation Theory
ISSN (print)	1942-3454
ISSN (online)	1942-3462
Scope