How to format your references using the ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology (TOSEM). 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]

Melanie Moses. 2009. Being human: engineering: worldwide ebb. Nature 457, 7230 (February 2009), 660–661.

A journal article with 2 authors

[1]

H. J. B. Birks and Hilary H. Birks. 2004. Paleoecology. The rise and fall of forests. Science 305, 5683 (July 2004), 484–485.

A journal article with 3 authors

[1]

Lara Goscé, David A. W. Barton, and Anders Johansson. 2014. Analytical modelling of the spread of disease in confined and crowded spaces. Sci. Rep. 4, (May 2014), 4856.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

[1]

Douglas A. Wiens, Sridhar Anandakrishnan, J. Paul Winberry, and Matt A. King. 2008. Simultaneous teleseismic and geodetic observations of the stick-slip motion of an Antarctic ice stream. Nature 453, 7196 (June 2008), 770–774.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

[1]

Herbert Goering, Hans-Görg Roos, and Lutz Tobiska. 2010. Die Finite-Elemente-Methode für Anfänger. Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim, Germany.

An edited book

[1]

Ernst-Wilhelm Radü and Mohammad Ali Sahraian (Eds.). 2008. MRI Atlas of MS Lesions. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg.

A chapter in an edited book

[1]

Qian Liu, Xuanming Duan, and Changsi Peng. 2014. Laser Micro-/Nanofabrication and Applications Based on Multiphoton Process. In Novel Optical Technologies for Nanofabrication, Xuanming Duan and Changsi Peng (eds.). Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, 81–151.

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 Software Engineering and Methodology.

Blog post

[1]

Robin Andrews. 2016. Why Does Cutting Up An Onion Make You Cry? IFLScience. Retrieved October 30, 2018 from https://www.iflscience.com/chemistry/why-does-cutting-up-an-onion-make-you-cry/

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. 2014. Consumers’ Location Data: Companies Take Steps to Protect Privacy, but Practices Are Inconsistent, and Risks May Not be Clear to Consumers. 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]

Gina Scoggins Smith. 2008. The relationship between legislative implementations and educator readiness in inclusive educational environments. Doctoral dissertation. University of Phoenix, Phoenix, AZ.

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]

George Gene Gustines. 2010. Hey, Archie! Want to Build An Empire? New York Times, BU1.

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 [3, 5, 6, 8].

About the journal

Full journal title	ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology
Abbreviation	ACM Trans. Softw. Eng. Methodol.
ISSN (print)	1049-331X
ISSN (online)	1557-7392
Scope