The ACM article template allows authors to use LaTeX or Microsoft Word to prepare high-quality articles for publication in the ACM Digital Library. This document provides authors with instructions on how to use the article template to prepare their work and submit it to TAPS, the ACM article production system.
The introduction of the ACM article template in 2017 was an important building block for the future of the ACM Digital Library, as it made more consistent the underlying metadata that is a part of an author's source material - the LaTeX commands and Word styles an author uses in the preparation of their article defines the various parts of their article: the title, the authors, the section headings, and so on.
An important concept for authors to understand is the separation of content and style. The input format - whether Word or LaTeX - is intentionally simple in appearance, making creation and editing simpler, as well as reviewing. Authors provide metadata - through LaTeX commands - \title{}, \section{} and so on - and associating styles with content in a Word document - "this is a paragraph, this is a subtitle," and so on. TAPS takes Word or LaTeX documents as input, and produces well-formatted, high-quality PDF and HTML5 documents for publication. More information on TAPS can be found in this document: TAPS: The ACM Production System.
The article creation process can be summed up in a few steps.
Communication between the author and ACM regarding your rights form is done via e-mail; please make sure you add "rightsreview@acm.org" to your e-mail "whitelist" so that you don't miss any communication from ACM.
This document explains how to use Microsoft Word to prepare your ACM article for submission, and for publication. If you are using LaTeX to prepare your ACM article, you should review this document instead. The same topics are covered, and the emphasis there is on using LaTeX to accomplish the task.
Authors who use Microsoft Word to prepare their articles can obtain the required Word documents - the "submission template" that contains style information used to tag the elements of your article, and the "master template" that contains macros for citation, reference, figure and image cross-linking, and manuscript validation, from this link.
Please note: You must use Microsoft Word, not LibreOffice, OpenOffice, Google Docs or other alternatives.
Windows and Macintosh users will start with the same submission template Word document, adding their content to it and applying styles to each of the major elements - title, paragraph, figure, and so on - to it. This template Word document can be found at this link.
There are separate versions of the "master template" for Microsoft Word for Windows, Macintosh Office 2011, and Macintosh Office 2016 - please download the version appropriate for your operating system and Microsoft Word version. (The Macintosh Office 2016 version also works with the Microsoft Office 365 version of Microsoft Word for Macintosh.)
Attaching the "master template" to your existing Word document is done in slightly different ways, dependent on your computer's operating system.
To set this up in Word (for Macintosh):
To set this up in Word (for Windows):
Your article should be prepared in a one-column format. The Microsoft Word submission template prepares your content in a single column by default. TAPS will convert the one-column Word document to the familiar two-column article format - a PDF document - when the Word document is processed, as well as a responsive HTML5 version. Both will be made available in the ACM Digital Library.
An example will illustrate this more clearly. This Word document - a simple example with two images, one spanning both columns, and numbered citations and references - can be viewed in Microsoft Word, in both "Draft" and "Print Layout" mode, to show the two images and all of the styles which have been applied to the various parts of the document. When this Word document is sent to TAPS, and the file is processed, one of the generated files is this PDF document. If you are interested in seeing the samples with author year citations and references, the Word document and PDF document are also available.
The Word Count and Page Count section, below, provides rough correspondences between word count and formatted-PDF page count.
When preparing an article using Microsoft Word, you should be working in "Draft" mode (and not "Print Layout" mode) and have set up Word so that the applied styles are clearly visible on the left side of your document.
To set this up in Word (for Macintosh):
To set this up in Word (for Windows):
Figures will not show up in "Draft" mode, and it's fine to switch between "Print Layout" and "Draft" mode while you are working on your document.
When preparing an article for submission to an event or journal for REVIEW, the amount of tagging - applying styles to discrete elements of your article - which must be done is smaller. The emphasis at this point is on the content you are presenting. Your article should have figures and images, and citations and references, and the text of your presentation.
If and when your article is accepted for publication, you will need to perform additional work in order to make your article ready to submit to TAPS. Adding alt-text to figures, tables, and images, cross-linking citations and references, and validation of your article are all required at this part of the process.
Please note that you do NOT need to add any rights information to your Word document. This will be automatically added to the PDF and HTML5 versions of your article when they are generated by TAPS. (At present, the generated version of your completed rights form that is sent to you when you complete the rights form instructs you to add this information to your Word document, and this inconsistency between instruction and implementation is being addressed by ACM personnel at this time.)
Authors who use Microsoft Word to prepare their articles do not need to set the template style; the appropriate template - set by the organizers of the event or journal - will be used by TAPS in the preparation of the PDF and HTML5 versions of your article.
Sponsored events and journal publications often use page counts to segregate articles into several classes - "long papers," "short papers," "abstracts" and the like. The simplified input format of Word documents may make it difficult to determine a correspondence between "word count" and the "page count" of a well-formatted PDF document.
The following table illustrates - in general terms - a correspondence between word count and page count. The sample documents contained no figures, tables, or other elements typically found in an article, and this was exclusive of references or appendices.
| Word Count | Page Count (approximate) |
|---|---|
| 1,300 words | 2 pages of formatted, two-column output. |
| 2,000 words | 3 pages of formatted, two-column output. |
| 3,100 words | 4 pages of formatted, two-column output. |
| 4,000 words | 5 pages of formatted, two-column output. |
| 7,000 words | 8 pages of formatted, two-column output. |
| 8,000 words | 9 pages of formatted, two-column output. |
| 10,000 words | 11 pages of formatted, two-column output. |
When preparing the author list for an article, please keep the following in mind:
References should be prepared in the ACM reference format. The default citation format for ACM publications is the "numbered" format. Articles presented at conferences sponsored by ACM SIGGRAPH and ACM SIGPLAN use the "author year" format.
Authors who use Microsoft Word should choose the first - "1" - option when cross-linking their citations and references for the numbered format, and the second - "2" - option for the "author year" format.
Additional information on the preparation of citations and references in Microsoft Word can be found in this document: TAPS: Citations and References in Word.
ACM's Computing Classification System (CCS) is a taxonomy for the computing field. Authors are expected to select one or more descriptors (or "concepts") from the CCS and add them to your document.
A list of CCS descriptors can be built for your article from https://dl.acm.org/ccs/ccs.cfm. Authors can select one or more descriptors and assign a priority to them.
When a list of CCS descriptors has been built, that information must be added to your document. In Microsoft Word, adding CCS concepts to your document is a two-step process:
• Computer systems organization~Real-time operating systemsUsers may augment the ACM taxonomy with user-defined keywords. The Keywords section is a comma-separated list of keywords, each styled with the "Keyword" tag.
Your article should begin with a short - one or two paragraphs - abstract, providing an overview of the work to be presented. Style the abstract with the "Abstract" tag.
There are four different sectioning levels available to authors, with the "Head1" through "Head4" styles. A top-level section would be styled with the "Head1" tag, a subsection would use the "Head2" style, and so on.
Please use these sectioning tags / styles, and do not produce your own for a different look than what is provided.
Paragraphs must be styled with the "Para" tag. The exception to this is when an equation, table, or other element is placed within the paragraph. In this case, the remainder of the current paragraph is styled with the "ParaContinue" tag so that no indentation of the text occurs.
Equations can be added with the built-in Equation Editor or a third-party application such as MathType. Use the "DisplayFormula" (for equations with an equation number) or "DisplayFormulaUnnum" (for equations with no equation number) styles as appropriate.
When equations occur in the middle of a paragraph of text, please use the "ParaContinue" style on the part of the paragraph that occurs after the equation.
When an algorithm is included in an article, the declaration of the algorithm starts the algorithm, and is styled with the "AlgorithmCaption" tag. The algorithm itself follows, and all of its lines are styled with the "Algorithm" tag.
Figures and tables are "float elements" which should be inserted in the Word document after their first occurrence.
When working in "draft" mode, figures are not visible - there will be a blank space where the figure occurs. Switching to "Print Mode" will reveal the figure.
The "Image" style should be applied to the figure, and the "FigureCaption" style to its caption. Figure captions go below the figure, and captions are required elements.
Images that occupy a single column should be sized to fit within the column - 3 inches (7.62 cm) wide is a reasonable value. (In general, you should scale images to the size they will occupy in the finished two-column PDF output.)
If you wish to have an image or figure that spans multiple columns OR wish to have multiple images in a single figure, this should be done only after your article has been accepted for publication and you are preparing your article for TAPS.
Figures with multiple images - three smaller images in the same figure, for example, or a three by three grid of images in the same figure - are accomplished by creating a table with the necessary number of rows and columns, and inserting an image into each of the table's cells. These kinds of figures must have the caption styled with the "TableCaption" tag.
All of the figures in your article must have descriptive (or "alt-text") text included for accessibility. ("Alt-text" is used by screen reader software.) Once an figure has been added to your article, the descriptive text is added by:
If you are embedding copyright information in the figures in your article, please do so using an image-editing application (Photoshop, GIMP, etc.) and do not use a "text box" to do so.
Please use Word's built-in table editor to create tables in your Word document.
The table's head row should be selected and styled with the "TableHead" tag, found under "Body Elements."
The "TableCaption" style should be applied to the table's caption. Table captions go above the table, and is a required element.
Figures and Tables that should span both columns of your formatted article need additional styling applied to them, so that TAPS will properly format them.
After the appropriate figure and/or table styles have been applied to the figure or table which will span multiple columns, select both the figure or table AND its caption, and style them with the "Large Float" tag, found under "Body Elements."
Providing links to figures and tables from elsewhere in your article is straightforward. This is done after the "master template" has been added to your Word document.
Cross-linking the citations and the figures and tables is accomplished by selecting "Reference and Cross Linking" -> "Cross-referencing" -> "Floats and Bibliography" and allowing Word to run that macro. If successful, both the label in the figure or table, and the citation to the figure or table should now be active links and colored, rather than plain text.
The "Floats and Bibliography" macro is the same one used to link references and citations in your article.
Lists - numbered, bullets, etc. - can be created using the standard Word list commands, and should be styled with the "List Paragraph" tag when complete.
There are a number of styles in the "submission" template that must be used to tag various heading elements:
Acknowledgments are placed before the references, and should include any required or desired mention of support, sponsorship, or funding. The "GrantSponser" and "GrantNumber" tags should be used to style the grant sponsor and grant number information, respectively.
Appendices should follow the references. There are three - "AppendixH1," "AppendixH2," and "AppendixH3" - section heading styles for use in an appendix, analogous to the "Head1," "Head2," and "Head3" styles used in the body of your article. All other styles can and should be used in the appendix in the same manner as they are used in the body of your article.