How to format your references using the ACM Transactions on Computer Systems citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for ACM Transactions on Computer Systems (TOCS). 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]

Tim Chapman. 2004. Starting from scratch. Nature 430, 6995 (July 2004), 113.

A journal article with 2 authors

[1]

Alan Hastings and Margaret A. Palmer. 2003. Mathematics and biology. A bright future for biologists and mathematicians? Science 299, 5615 (March 2003), 2003–2004.

A journal article with 3 authors

[1]

Pedro Chan, Robin A. Curtis, and Jim Warwicker. 2013. Soluble expression of proteins correlates with a lack of positively-charged surface. Sci. Rep. 3, (November 2013), 3333.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

[1]

Hyungtak Seo, Seungbae Ahn, Jinseo Kim, Young-Ahn Lee, Koo-Hyun Chung, and Ki-Joon Jeon. 2014. Multi-resistive reduced graphene oxide diode with reversible surface electrochemical reaction induced carrier control. Sci. Rep. 4, (July 2014), 5642.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

[1]

Richard R. Lunt and John D. Cunic. 2000. Profiles in Flue Gas Desulfurization. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ.

An edited book

[1]

Cameron Tropea and Horst Bleckmann (Eds.). 2012. Nature-Inspired Fluid Mechanics: Results of the DFG Priority Programme 1207 ”Nature-inspired Fluid Mechanics” 2006-2012. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg.

A chapter in an edited book

[1]

Heike Wehrheim. 2006. Refinement and Consistency in Component Models with Multiple Views. In Architecting Systems with Trustworthy Components: International Seminar, Dagstuhl Castle, Germany, December 12-17, 2004. Revised Selected Papers, Ralf H. Reussner, Judith A. Stafford and Clemens A. Szyperski (eds.). Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, 84–102.

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 Computer Systems.

Blog post

[1]

Robin Andrews. 2016. New Zealand’s 7.8M Earthquake Really Messed Up The Environment. 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. 1996. Social Security: Telephone Access Enhanced at Field Offices Under Demonstration Project. 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]

Diane L. Gullett. 2017. Lived Experience of Suffering through the 2010 Earthquake in Haiti. Doctoral dissertation. Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton, FL.

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 Brantley. 2016. Considering the Lives That Shape Our Own. New York Times, C1.

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 Computer Systems
Abbreviation	ACM Trans. Comput. Syst.
ISSN (print)	0734-2071
ISSN (online)	1557-7333
Scope