Changing the order of references using the ACM-Reference-Format bibliography style

Question

I am preparing a manuscript of a paper using documentclass acmart. I am using bibliographystyle ACM-Reference-Format. But my references are neither printed in the order of citation nor in alphabetical order. Can somebody please guide me to solve this problem. I would like to print the references in the order of citation. Thanks

Answer 1

First of all: If the document you are writing should be published with ACM it is most likely wise to not make any changes to the ACM bibliography style without consulting with the editors. The document might not be accepted if a modified template is used.

That being said, if you don't intend to publish with ACM:

The acmart documentclass uses the natbib package for reference management by default, which uses the ACM-Reference-Format.bst file for styling. You might want to use an alternative style that has your desired properties, see e.g. this answer.

Furthermore, you might want to use the package biblatex instead for reference management, which does not require changing the ACM-Reference-Format.bst file. You can use biblatex with acmart by passing the option natbib=false to \documentclass

\documentclass[natbib=false]{acmart}