Information for Authors

Submissions

Submit your paper using ACM manuscript central. (If you need an account, select "Create Account" in the top right corner.) To ensure proper indexing, classification, retrieval and dissemination, authors must include the following in the manuscript: For the full classification scheme, see The ACM Computing Classification System.

Many manuscripts submitted to ACM Transactions on Computer Systems are based on the author's own previous publications (e.g., conference papers). Such manuscripts should contain a footnote on the first page that lists the authors' relevant prior publications and states the contributions of the manuscript beyond these publications. The norm for ACM Journals and Transactions is that the submitted manuscript must contain at least 25% new content (i.e., new insights, new results, etc.). For more details, see Policy on Prior Publication and Simultaneous Submissions and ACM Policy and Procedures on Plagiarism.

Formatting

Please prepare you submission in LaTex or Word formatted in the ACM style which is required for publication in TOCS. Instructions for these formats are on the ACM Web site:
  • Latex style guide
  • Microsoft Word style guide
    • When the paper is accepted for publication ACM requires the following files:
    1. source files in either LaTeX or Microsoft Word, including:
      1. Computing Classification System Terms
      2. General Terms, one or more of the fixed 16 Terms
      3. Additional Keywords and Phrases
    2. full paper in PDF; and
    3. (eps) encapsulated individual postscript files for all graphics (eps of all figures are needed in case ACM may need to resize the figures after the source file conversion). Other acceptable formats are gif, tif, or jpg but eps is preferred.
    Authors may bundle the above files and just send one file to the Editor-in-Chief. Please let us know how you bundled them so that we can unbundle the files here for final examination before forwarding to ACM Headquarters for publication. You can also refer to ACM's Guidelines for Submitting Articles

    Copyright and Use

    Author Rights: New options for ACM authors to manage rights and permissions for their work: ACM introduces a new publishing license agreement, an updated copyright transfer agreement, and a new author-pays option which allows for perpetual open access through the ACM Digital Library. For more information, visit the ACM Author Rights webpage.



    We encourage authors to take advantage of ACM's Author-Izer Service.

    Page Charges

    ACM no longer collects voluntary page charges.