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 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]

Paul Smaglik. 2002. A climate of uncertainty. Nature 415, 6870 (January 2002), 6.

A journal article with 2 authors

[1]

Danielle M. Schultz and Tehshik P. Yoon. 2014. Solar synthesis: prospects in visible light photocatalysis. Science 343, 6174 (February 2014), 1239176.

A journal article with 3 authors

[1]

Jeremy S. Dasen, Jeh-Ping Liu, and Thomas M. Jessell. 2003. Motor neuron columnar fate imposed by sequential phases of Hox-c activity. Nature 425, 6961 (October 2003), 926–933.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

[1]

Xiao Han, Richmond Lee, Tao Chen, Jie Luo, Yixin Lu, and Kuo-Wei Huang. 2013. Kinetic evidence of an apparent negative activation enthalpy in an organocatalytic process. Sci. Rep. 3, (2013), 2557.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

[1]

Adrian Kitai. 2011. Principles of Solar Cells, LEDs and Diodes: The role of the PN junction. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, Chichester, UK.

An edited book

[1]

David Escors. 2016. Myeloid-Derived Suppressor Cells and Cancer (1st ed. 2016 ed.). Springer International Publishing, Cham.

A chapter in an edited book

[1]

Jun Fang, Xingyu Gao, Xingao Gong, and Aihui Zhou. 2011. Interpolation Based Local Postprocessing for Adaptive Finite Element Approximations in Electronic Structure Calculations. In Domain Decomposition Methods in Science and Engineering XIX, Yunqing Huang, Ralf Kornhuber, Olof Widlund and Jinchao Xu (eds.). Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, 51–61.

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]

Jonathan O`Callaghan. 2015. Comet 67P Was Made By Two Bodies Merging Together, New Evidence Suggests. 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. 1983. Improvements in Certain District of Columbia Public Schools’ Administrative Operations. 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]

Laura D. Wiedeman. 2012. Acceptance promoting and hindering interactions in integrative behavioral couple therapy. Doctoral dissertation. Pepperdine University, Malibu, 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]

Kate Kelly and Alexandra Stevenson. 2017. Doubt After Health Care Defeat Briefly Sends Stocks Tumbling. New York Times, B1.

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 [3, 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