4 ms·

CACM Is Now Open Access

377 points by transpute 3y ago

Abhitaneja89 3y ago
[dead]
midko 3y ago
This is great news! As a long-time CACM subscriber, I highly recommend it! There's a lot of breadth across Computer Science topics and the in-depth articles in most issues are v good! I only wish I had more time for it..
hkgirjenk 3y ago
Is it because of ArXiv?
- stonogo 3y ago
  arXiv is more than twenty years old at this point. I think the rising opposition to exploitative publishers has ratcheted up pressure on other institutions to switch to an open access model more than arXiv suddenly causing policy changes. In 2019 there was a big dustup when people thought Trump was going to issue an executive order requiring all federally-funded research to be open access. ACM as an organization signed a letter with a bunch of publishers opposing this idea. It's own membership (myself included) objected pretty strongly... and the next year ACM announced plans to move to open access. So, just maybe, they're actually listening to their members.
  - kragen 3y ago
    arxiv is thirty years old i think?
- JohnKemeny 3y ago
  Most likely not, at least not directly. CACM and arXiv do not in any way compete. However, arXiv has done a lot for open access publishing, so perhaps it wouldn't have happened (this early) had it not been for arXiv.
- raphman 3y ago
  No. ACM has been on a slow path towards making everything Open Access for many years now - driven both by internal and external feedback. Given that the ACM Digital Library (individual and library subscriptions) has been subsidizing other ACM endeavors, that making stuff OA is not something you can take back later, and that the required article processing charges (APCs) cause other problems, they have been rather careful with the transition. They plan to make the entire digital library freely accessible by January 1, 2026. Here's a short article about timeline and implications: https://medium.com/sigchi/about-acm-open-cd544408559c https://medium.com/sigchi/about-acm-open-cd544408559c EDIT: for anyone wondering why there need to be APCs at all, Jonathan Aldrich gives a glimpse into costs and benefits of 'traditional' publishers: https://medium.com/sigchi/what-benefits-do-traditional-publishers-provide-83b7bd3fcbc0 https://medium.com/sigchi/what-benefits-do-traditional-publi...
  - g-b-r 3y ago
    The entite library? This is amazing, I hadn't been following recently!!!
  - unsignedint 3y ago
    I'm interested in understanding how the ACM is handling the transition to Open Access, particularly given that they offer a lifetime add-on to their life membership option. How are they addressing potential pushback from individuals who have already paid a significant amount to access the Digital Library? Are they considering making a portion of the Digital Library exclusive to paid subscribers even after the transition to Open Access?
  - guyomes 3y ago
    Note that LIPICs [1] publishes the conference ECOOP chaired by Jonathan Aldrich. It is a very interesting alternative to ACM for conference proceedings: it hosts some great conferences and it has lower APCs. It does not publish journals though. [1]: https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/series/LIPIcs https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/series/LIPIcs
sitkack 3y ago
This is some of the most wonderful news I have heard in 2024. I have been complaining in probably a not to effectual way over the past 15 years about this. I'd like to think in some small part, I helped in this endeavor, but I am no butterfly. It is intellectually honest, that everyone on earth should have access to this material. The garden is available to all. Thank you ACM!
tempodox 3y ago
Fantastic news, I'm sure this will turn out to be a good decision.
__rito__ 3y ago
I could not find a link from where I could access the said archive.
- TachyonicBytes 3y ago
  They seem to have added "Download PDF" buttons to every issue at the usual link https://cacm.acm.org/issues https://cacm.acm.org/issues. There's also the digital library https://dl.acm.org/ https://dl.acm.org/
  - g-b-r 3y ago
    Yes there are small download buttons at https://cacm.acm.org/issues https://cacm.acm.org/issues, from the library instead I think they're not (all) still accessible
    - __rito__ 3y ago
      Here's an issue with the said "Downloadload PDF" button: https://cacm.acm.org/issue/august-2023/ https://cacm.acm.org/issue/august-2023/. But, when I click it, it doesn't download anything. But opens a page of topic hierarchy (?).
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
      - Jtsummers 3y ago
        For some reason the download PDF option doesn't work reliably. Two ways to get to the actual PDF if it takes you to the wrong page: Slow way: Click archive, navigate to the issue, select PDF. Faster way: On the right hand side (desktop) there's a vertical bar with some buttons click the circled i, then "Issue's Table of Contents". Takes you to the issue's page and you can get the PDf.
Abhitaneja89 3y ago
[dead]
g-b-r 3y ago
THIS IS SO GREAT There are many seminal papers in the older issues, and it's only right that they finally, again, be accessible for everyone!!! As an aside, I encourage everyone learning or at least struggling with a new subject to check its first papers, they often clarify it better than anything else (and are usually less complex than you'd expect)
- Someone 3y ago
  > There are many seminal papers in the older issues, and it's only right that they finally, again, be accessible for everyone!!! Papers from before 2000 have been freely available since May 2022 (https://associationsnow.com/2022/07/the-way-things-were-why-open-access-to-the-acm-digital-library-matters/ https://associationsnow.com/2022/07/the-way-things-were-why-..., https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31447465 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31447465)
  - g-b-r 3y ago
    Yes thanks, I had noticed it then, I guess I stopped following ACM for more than I remembered. Amazing anyhow.
asymmetric 3y ago
Pretty brave of them to do this in a time where everyone is instead trying to sell their silos to AI companies.
criddell 3y ago
For people familiar with this resource, do you have a top three list of articles to start with? It would also be cool to hear from HNers who have papers on there. I’m adding this just in case you aren’t comfortable including yourself on a top three list.
- nusuth31416 3y ago
  I really enjoyed reading Programming Pearls by John Bentley many years ago. (Not working in IT sadly)
  - criddell 3y ago
    I had no idea that's where Programming Pearls came from. I bought both books years ago (along with Dewdney's Tinkertoy Computer) and really enjoyed them. I need to dig them out for a re-read.
    - sitkack 3y ago
      I really enjoyed Dewdney's "New Turing Omnibus", it is a collection of problems that can be solved computationally. It is a great gift for anyone wanting to solve problems with computers and new to computer science. https://archive.org/details/newturingomnibus0000dewd_q3p6 https://archive.org/details/newturingomnibus0000dewd_q3p6
- jlas 3y ago
  Sort by citations (https://dl.acm.org/action/doSearch?SeriesKey=cacm&sortBy=cited https://dl.acm.org/action/doSearch?SeriesKey=cacm&sortBy=cit...) to see the most seminal ones.
  - criddell 3y ago
    Great idea. I did that and found a paper I would rank highly: Hoare’s “An axiomatic basis for computer programming”[1]. I clicked through and saw that it was included in their 25th anniversary issue and that particular issue seems like an excellent place to start.[2] [1]: https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/357980.358001 https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/357980.358001 [2]: https://dl.acm.org/toc/cacm/1983/26/1 https://dl.acm.org/toc/cacm/1983/26/1
lambdaone 3y ago
This is wonderful. Kudos to the ACM for making this happen, and being on the right side of history.
4ad 3y ago
Every ACM paper can be found for free either on Arxiv, the author's webpage, or in very rare cases SciHub. People pay for ACM membership because they want to, not because they are forced to. It's a great organization to be a part of. You can even participate in ACM conferences without being a member! Making it open access makes perfect sense and can only increase scientific engagement and distribution.
- HelloNurse 3y ago
  Every recent and/or popular and/or lucky paper can be found "for free" easily. With complete access, CACM ceases to be a blind spot of scientific literature.
- elric 3y ago
  > People pay for ACM membership because they want to, not because they are forced to. I used to pay for membership because I enjoyed perusing the print edition of CACM. I loved the opportunities for serenditipy that it created merely by being on my coffee table. The digital edition doesn't have that. It requires conscious effort to go check out the website.
  - jasonhong 3y ago
    (I write occasional blog posts for CACM and am also on the editorial board) If you have ideas for how to improve CACM, the editor-in-chief (Jim Larus) is highly receptive. He's interested in increasing the value of CACM for industry professionals, researchers, and students, and in increasing membership in ACM. For example, one idea I've shared with him is to make CACM the main gateway for all of ACM content. You'll note that the new CACM has an "Explore Topics" menu at the top, which lists areas like Architecture, HCI, Security and Privacy. My suggestion was to make this a feed for all relevant ACM content, including SIG newsletters that ACM already publishes, paper award winners, recent journal articles, blog posts, etc. Perhaps it might be useful to get feedback by asking some questions. If you are a member of ACM, what do you find most valuable about it? And if you aren't a member, given that you're on HN and likely interested in a lot of content and conferences that ACM offers, why not? What could ACM do differently or what could it offer that would make membership valuable to you?
sam_lowry_ 3y ago
Heh... I cancelled my membership once Moshe said CACM will never be open. It's been ages since then.
- raphman 3y ago
  Oh, where did he say this? IIRC, he always said that any OA model for ACM requires careful thinking about a sustainable business model. In 2009 he argued [1]: > "Indeed, the idea of unfettered access to scientific knowledge naturally resonates with many researchers, including me. So why doesn’t ACM become an open-access publisher? [...] ACM operates as a democratic association. If you believe that ACM should change its publishing business model, then you should lobby for this position. [...] The second issue is the business model of association publishing, for example, "reader pays" vs. "authors pays." This is a legitimate topic of discussion, as long as we understand that it cannot be separated from the overall business model of the association. Just remember, "free" is not a sound business model." In 2018 he wrote [2]: > "If we are serious about open access, then we must discuss its underlying business model. Let’s get serious about open access!" [1] https://cacm.acm.org/opinion/open-closed-or-clopen-access/ https://cacm.acm.org/opinion/open-closed-or-clopen-access/ [2] https://cacm.acm.org/opinion/open-access-and-acm/ https://cacm.acm.org/opinion/open-access-and-acm/
the_panopticon 3y ago
I wonder if other organizations like IEEE and its https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/ https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/ are next?
penguin_booze 3y ago
RSS feed is at https://cacm.acm.org/feed/ https://cacm.acm.org/feed/.
kragen 3y ago
this is great news is there a simple answer to 'what's the license'? i'd like to understand: - how effectively libraries' rights to archive, copy, and redistribute works published in cacm is protected; - whether the license is compatible with incorporation of text into wikipedia and stack overflow; and - to what extent volunteer translations into languages such as chinese and spanish can be legally archived, copied, and redistributed as i understand the term 'open access' (https://openaccess.mpg.de/Berlin-Declaration https://openaccess.mpg.de/Berlin-Declaration) the answer should be 'irrevocably', 'not necessarily', and 'completely', but i'd like confirmation that the acm isn't using 'open access' in an incompatible way. the berlin declaration specifies > The author(s) and right holder(s) of such contributions grant(s) to all users a free, irrevocable, worldwide, right of access to, and a license to copy, use, distribute, transmit and display the work publicly and to make and distribute derivative works, in any digital medium for any responsible purpose, subject to proper attribution of authorship (community standards, will continue to provide the mechanism for enforcement of proper attribution and responsible use of the published work, as they do now), as well as the right to make small numbers of printed copies for their personal use. i mean i see https://libraries.acm.org/subscriptions-access/acmopen#model https://libraries.acm.org/subscriptions-access/acmopen#model but i'm not seeing answers to those questions in it; it's more about how acm gets paid than about what licenses are being granted to the public
- raphman 3y ago
  IIUC, it's complicated. For new OA publications at conferences/journals, authors get a choice of CC licenses [1,2]. The respective licenses can be found in an article's [3] "Information" sidebar (hidden by default) or the HTML/PDF version [4]. Unfortunately, the licenses are apparently not shown more prominently in the ACM Digital Library. The search function does not allow filtering by license either. For CACM articles, the traditional ACM copyright notice seems to apply [5] (maybe there are CC-licensed articles, but I did not see any so far): "Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for third-party components of this work must be honored. For all other uses, contact the Owner/Author." For pre-OA publications (< ~2020 ?), authors could either transfer copyright or give ACM a publishing license [3]. I'd assume that ACM may assign an arbitrary CC license to publications to which they own the copyright but not to ones for which they only have publishing rights. Given that authors only licensed publishing rights for the final article to ACM, I'd guess the only acceptable CC license in this case would be CC-BY-ND. However, I guess that ACM won't want to go through the trouble of assigning CC licenses to older publications. EDIT: My tentative guesses/answers to your questions would be: > - how effectively libraries' rights to archive, copy, and redistribute works published in cacm is protected; IIRC, libraries subscribing to ACM's DL already have the right to archive the content. Given that many authors have only given ACM the right to distribute their works, I'm not sure whether scraping OA articles is allowed. (ACM has been banning IP ranges for mass-downloading papers in the past, so be careful.) > - whether the license is compatible with incorporation of text into wikipedia and stack overflow; and IMHO, only if a non-ND CC license was applied to the article. Also, correct attribution is still needed [7]. > - to what extent volunteer translations into languages such as chinese and spanish can be legally archived, copied, and redistributed Again, probably only for explicitly CC-licensed content (excluding -ND). [1] https://www.acm.org/publications/policies/publication-rights-and-licensing-policy https://www.acm.org/publications/policies/publication-rights... [2] https://cfiesler.medium.com/acm-copyright-licenses-which-should-you-choose-and-how-do-you-handle-third-party-material-dbe87be8b57c https://cfiesler.medium.com/acm-copyright-licenses-which-sho... [3] https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3623509.3633366 https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3623509.3633366 [4] https://dl.acm.org/doi/fullHtml/10.1145/3623509.3633366 https://dl.acm.org/doi/fullHtml/10.1145/3623509.3633366 [5] https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3624717 https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3624717 (sidebar) [6] https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/14734/which-acm-copyright-license-to-use https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/14734/which-acm... [7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Creative_Commons_text_attribution_notice https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Creative_Commons_text...
shrubble 3y ago
When I was studying up on APL I found that a huge amount of references were not available, so it is very nice to see now that a search done today returns so many results. Same for Snobol...
hintymad 3y ago
I was a subscriber of CACM for many years, but didn't renew my subscription this year because CACM had more and more content on social issues. The equity of this, the privacy of that. I find such contents incredibly boring and really hope that they focus more on researches. P.S., I was going to show some examples, but the latest issue of CACM does have more research-related articles than my impression with the past issues, so I could be wrong....
dreamcompiler 3y ago
About effing time. And thank you Alexandra Elbakyan because I'm sure you were a factor in this decision even if ACM won't admit it.
jameslarus 3y ago
[I am the editor-in-chief of CACM, in case that matters. https://cacm.acm.org/ https://cacm.acm.org/] Changing the economic basis of a thriving industry is a enormous challenge (how long has open source software been around?). ACM has publically committed to making all its content open-access by 2026 (https://www.acm.org/publications/openaccess https://www.acm.org/publications/openaccess). I'm still waiting to hear Microsoft or Facebook make a similar commitment (-:. It has taken years because the worldwide research community must change from the "readers and libraries pay" model to "writers pay." For ACM, the transition is well underway. Many ACM conferences are now open access, and I'm happy to say that CACM is now fully open access as well (previously, it was just the older issues). Opening CACM's content and creating a new website was a deliberate decision to try to make CACM into a central forum for the technical community to exchange ideas and debate issues. ACM is well aware that this community is orders of magnitude larger than its membership, so opening access to its flagship publication is an essential first step. There are many technical websites and blogs online; most are focused on specific topics and areas or intended for readers who may not have a technical background. CACM's remit is computing in general, and we assume our readers are technically literate. Please contribute (https://cacm.acm.org/author-guidelines/ https://cacm.acm.org/author-guidelines/). CACM offers a range of options: informal blog posts, short Viewpoint pieces, and longer Research and Practice articles. We would like to hear from you!

377 points by transpute 3y ago

[dead]

This is great news! As a long-time CACM subscriber, I highly recommend it! There's a lot of breadth across Computer Science topics and the in-depth articles in most issues are v good! I only wish I had more time for it..

hkgirjenk 3y ago

Is it because of ArXiv?

stonogo 3y ago
arXiv is more than twenty years old at this point. I think the rising opposition to exploitative publishers has ratcheted up pressure on other institutions to switch to an open access model more than arXiv suddenly causing policy changes. In 2019 there was a big dustup when people thought Trump was going to issue an executive order requiring all federally-funded research to be open access. ACM as an organization signed a letter with a bunch of publishers opposing this idea. It's own membership (myself included) objected pretty strongly... and the next year ACM announced plans to move to open access. So, just maybe, they're actually listening to their members.
- kragen 3y ago
  arxiv is thirty years old i think?
JohnKemeny 3y ago
Most likely not, at least not directly. CACM and arXiv do not in any way compete. However, arXiv has done a lot for open access publishing, so perhaps it wouldn't have happened (this early) had it not been for arXiv.
raphman 3y ago
No. ACM has been on a slow path towards making everything Open Access for many years now - driven both by internal and external feedback. Given that the ACM Digital Library (individual and library subscriptions) has been subsidizing other ACM endeavors, that making stuff OA is not something you can take back later, and that the required article processing charges (APCs) cause other problems, they have been rather careful with the transition. They plan to make the entire digital library freely accessible by January 1, 2026. Here's a short article about timeline and implications: https://medium.com/sigchi/about-acm-open-cd544408559c https://medium.com/sigchi/about-acm-open-cd544408559c EDIT: for anyone wondering why there need to be APCs at all, Jonathan Aldrich gives a glimpse into costs and benefits of 'traditional' publishers: https://medium.com/sigchi/what-benefits-do-traditional-publishers-provide-83b7bd3fcbc0 https://medium.com/sigchi/what-benefits-do-traditional-publi...
- g-b-r 3y ago
  The entite library? This is amazing, I hadn't been following recently!!!
- unsignedint 3y ago
  I'm interested in understanding how the ACM is handling the transition to Open Access, particularly given that they offer a lifetime add-on to their life membership option. How are they addressing potential pushback from individuals who have already paid a significant amount to access the Digital Library? Are they considering making a portion of the Digital Library exclusive to paid subscribers even after the transition to Open Access?
- guyomes 3y ago
  Note that LIPICs [1] publishes the conference ECOOP chaired by Jonathan Aldrich. It is a very interesting alternative to ACM for conference proceedings: it hosts some great conferences and it has lower APCs. It does not publish journals though. [1]: https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/series/LIPIcs https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/series/LIPIcs

sitkack 3y ago

This is some of the most wonderful news I have heard in 2024. I have been complaining in probably a not to effectual way over the past 15 years about this. I'd like to think in some small part, I helped in this endeavor, but I am no butterfly. It is intellectually honest, that everyone on earth should have access to this material. The garden is available to all. Thank you ACM!

tempodox 3y ago

Fantastic news, I'm sure this will turn out to be a good decision.

__rito__ 3y ago

I could not find a link from where I could access the said archive.

TachyonicBytes 3y ago
They seem to have added "Download PDF" buttons to every issue at the usual link https://cacm.acm.org/issues https://cacm.acm.org/issues. There's also the digital library https://dl.acm.org/ https://dl.acm.org/
- g-b-r 3y ago
  Yes there are small download buttons at https://cacm.acm.org/issues https://cacm.acm.org/issues, from the library instead I think they're not (all) still accessible
  - __rito__ 3y ago
    Here's an issue with the said "Downloadload PDF" button: https://cacm.acm.org/issue/august-2023/ https://cacm.acm.org/issue/august-2023/. But, when I click it, it doesn't download anything. But opens a page of topic hierarchy (?).
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - Jtsummers 3y ago
      For some reason the download PDF option doesn't work reliably. Two ways to get to the actual PDF if it takes you to the wrong page: Slow way: Click archive, navigate to the issue, select PDF. Faster way: On the right hand side (desktop) there's a vertical bar with some buttons click the circled i, then "Issue's Table of Contents". Takes you to the issue's page and you can get the PDf.

Abhitaneja89 3y ago

[dead]

g-b-r 3y ago

THIS IS SO GREAT There are many seminal papers in the older issues, and it's only right that they finally, again, be accessible for everyone!!! As an aside, I encourage everyone learning or at least struggling with a new subject to check its first papers, they often clarify it better than anything else (and are usually less complex than you'd expect)

Someone 3y ago
> There are many seminal papers in the older issues, and it's only right that they finally, again, be accessible for everyone!!! Papers from before 2000 have been freely available since May 2022 (https://associationsnow.com/2022/07/the-way-things-were-why-open-access-to-the-acm-digital-library-matters/ https://associationsnow.com/2022/07/the-way-things-were-why-..., https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31447465 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31447465)
- g-b-r 3y ago
  Yes thanks, I had noticed it then, I guess I stopped following ACM for more than I remembered. Amazing anyhow.

asymmetric 3y ago

Pretty brave of them to do this in a time where everyone is instead trying to sell their silos to AI companies.

criddell 3y ago

For people familiar with this resource, do you have a top three list of articles to start with? It would also be cool to hear from HNers who have papers on there. I’m adding this just in case you aren’t comfortable including yourself on a top three list.

nusuth31416 3y ago
I really enjoyed reading Programming Pearls by John Bentley many years ago. (Not working in IT sadly)
- criddell 3y ago
  I had no idea that's where Programming Pearls came from. I bought both books years ago (along with Dewdney's Tinkertoy Computer) and really enjoyed them. I need to dig them out for a re-read.
  - sitkack 3y ago
    I really enjoyed Dewdney's "New Turing Omnibus", it is a collection of problems that can be solved computationally. It is a great gift for anyone wanting to solve problems with computers and new to computer science. https://archive.org/details/newturingomnibus0000dewd_q3p6 https://archive.org/details/newturingomnibus0000dewd_q3p6
jlas 3y ago
Sort by citations (https://dl.acm.org/action/doSearch?SeriesKey=cacm&sortBy=cited https://dl.acm.org/action/doSearch?SeriesKey=cacm&sortBy=cit...) to see the most seminal ones.
- criddell 3y ago
  Great idea. I did that and found a paper I would rank highly: Hoare’s “An axiomatic basis for computer programming”[1]. I clicked through and saw that it was included in their 25th anniversary issue and that particular issue seems like an excellent place to start.[2] [1]: https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/357980.358001 https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/357980.358001 [2]: https://dl.acm.org/toc/cacm/1983/26/1 https://dl.acm.org/toc/cacm/1983/26/1

lambdaone 3y ago

This is wonderful. Kudos to the ACM for making this happen, and being on the right side of history.

4ad 3y ago

Every ACM paper can be found for free either on Arxiv, the author's webpage, or in very rare cases SciHub. People pay for ACM membership because they want to, not because they are forced to. It's a great organization to be a part of. You can even participate in ACM conferences without being a member! Making it open access makes perfect sense and can only increase scientific engagement and distribution.

HelloNurse 3y ago
Every recent and/or popular and/or lucky paper can be found "for free" easily. With complete access, CACM ceases to be a blind spot of scientific literature.
elric 3y ago
> People pay for ACM membership because they want to, not because they are forced to. I used to pay for membership because I enjoyed perusing the print edition of CACM. I loved the opportunities for serenditipy that it created merely by being on my coffee table. The digital edition doesn't have that. It requires conscious effort to go check out the website.
- jasonhong 3y ago
  (I write occasional blog posts for CACM and am also on the editorial board) If you have ideas for how to improve CACM, the editor-in-chief (Jim Larus) is highly receptive. He's interested in increasing the value of CACM for industry professionals, researchers, and students, and in increasing membership in ACM. For example, one idea I've shared with him is to make CACM the main gateway for all of ACM content. You'll note that the new CACM has an "Explore Topics" menu at the top, which lists areas like Architecture, HCI, Security and Privacy. My suggestion was to make this a feed for all relevant ACM content, including SIG newsletters that ACM already publishes, paper award winners, recent journal articles, blog posts, etc. Perhaps it might be useful to get feedback by asking some questions. If you are a member of ACM, what do you find most valuable about it? And if you aren't a member, given that you're on HN and likely interested in a lot of content and conferences that ACM offers, why not? What could ACM do differently or what could it offer that would make membership valuable to you?

sam_lowry_ 3y ago

Heh... I cancelled my membership once Moshe said CACM will never be open. It's been ages since then.

raphman 3y ago
Oh, where did he say this? IIRC, he always said that any OA model for ACM requires careful thinking about a sustainable business model. In 2009 he argued [1]: > "Indeed, the idea of unfettered access to scientific knowledge naturally resonates with many researchers, including me. So why doesn’t ACM become an open-access publisher? [...] ACM operates as a democratic association. If you believe that ACM should change its publishing business model, then you should lobby for this position. [...] The second issue is the business model of association publishing, for example, "reader pays" vs. "authors pays." This is a legitimate topic of discussion, as long as we understand that it cannot be separated from the overall business model of the association. Just remember, "free" is not a sound business model." In 2018 he wrote [2]: > "If we are serious about open access, then we must discuss its underlying business model. Let’s get serious about open access!" [1] https://cacm.acm.org/opinion/open-closed-or-clopen-access/ https://cacm.acm.org/opinion/open-closed-or-clopen-access/ [2] https://cacm.acm.org/opinion/open-access-and-acm/ https://cacm.acm.org/opinion/open-access-and-acm/

the_panopticon 3y ago

I wonder if other organizations like IEEE and its https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/ https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/ are next?

penguin_booze 3y ago

RSS feed is at https://cacm.acm.org/feed/ https://cacm.acm.org/feed/.

kragen 3y ago

this is great news is there a simple answer to 'what's the license'? i'd like to understand: - how effectively libraries' rights to archive, copy, and redistribute works published in cacm is protected; - whether the license is compatible with incorporation of text into wikipedia and stack overflow; and - to what extent volunteer translations into languages such as chinese and spanish can be legally archived, copied, and redistributed as i understand the term 'open access' (https://openaccess.mpg.de/Berlin-Declaration https://openaccess.mpg.de/Berlin-Declaration) the answer should be 'irrevocably', 'not necessarily', and 'completely', but i'd like confirmation that the acm isn't using 'open access' in an incompatible way. the berlin declaration specifies > The author(s) and right holder(s) of such contributions grant(s) to all users a free, irrevocable, worldwide, right of access to, and a license to copy, use, distribute, transmit and display the work publicly and to make and distribute derivative works, in any digital medium for any responsible purpose, subject to proper attribution of authorship (community standards, will continue to provide the mechanism for enforcement of proper attribution and responsible use of the published work, as they do now), as well as the right to make small numbers of printed copies for their personal use. i mean i see https://libraries.acm.org/subscriptions-access/acmopen#model https://libraries.acm.org/subscriptions-access/acmopen#model but i'm not seeing answers to those questions in it; it's more about how acm gets paid than about what licenses are being granted to the public

raphman 3y ago
IIUC, it's complicated. For new OA publications at conferences/journals, authors get a choice of CC licenses [1,2]. The respective licenses can be found in an article's [3] "Information" sidebar (hidden by default) or the HTML/PDF version [4]. Unfortunately, the licenses are apparently not shown more prominently in the ACM Digital Library. The search function does not allow filtering by license either. For CACM articles, the traditional ACM copyright notice seems to apply [5] (maybe there are CC-licensed articles, but I did not see any so far): "Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for third-party components of this work must be honored. For all other uses, contact the Owner/Author." For pre-OA publications (< ~2020 ?), authors could either transfer copyright or give ACM a publishing license [3]. I'd assume that ACM may assign an arbitrary CC license to publications to which they own the copyright but not to ones for which they only have publishing rights. Given that authors only licensed publishing rights for the final article to ACM, I'd guess the only acceptable CC license in this case would be CC-BY-ND. However, I guess that ACM won't want to go through the trouble of assigning CC licenses to older publications. EDIT: My tentative guesses/answers to your questions would be: > - how effectively libraries' rights to archive, copy, and redistribute works published in cacm is protected; IIRC, libraries subscribing to ACM's DL already have the right to archive the content. Given that many authors have only given ACM the right to distribute their works, I'm not sure whether scraping OA articles is allowed. (ACM has been banning IP ranges for mass-downloading papers in the past, so be careful.) > - whether the license is compatible with incorporation of text into wikipedia and stack overflow; and IMHO, only if a non-ND CC license was applied to the article. Also, correct attribution is still needed [7]. > - to what extent volunteer translations into languages such as chinese and spanish can be legally archived, copied, and redistributed Again, probably only for explicitly CC-licensed content (excluding -ND). [1] https://www.acm.org/publications/policies/publication-rights-and-licensing-policy https://www.acm.org/publications/policies/publication-rights... [2] https://cfiesler.medium.com/acm-copyright-licenses-which-should-you-choose-and-how-do-you-handle-third-party-material-dbe87be8b57c https://cfiesler.medium.com/acm-copyright-licenses-which-sho... [3] https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3623509.3633366 https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3623509.3633366 [4] https://dl.acm.org/doi/fullHtml/10.1145/3623509.3633366 https://dl.acm.org/doi/fullHtml/10.1145/3623509.3633366 [5] https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3624717 https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3624717 (sidebar) [6] https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/14734/which-acm-copyright-license-to-use https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/14734/which-acm... [7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Creative_Commons_text_attribution_notice https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Creative_Commons_text...

shrubble 3y ago

When I was studying up on APL I found that a huge amount of references were not available, so it is very nice to see now that a search done today returns so many results. Same for Snobol...

hintymad 3y ago

I was a subscriber of CACM for many years, but didn't renew my subscription this year because CACM had more and more content on social issues. The equity of this, the privacy of that. I find such contents incredibly boring and really hope that they focus more on researches. P.S., I was going to show some examples, but the latest issue of CACM does have more research-related articles than my impression with the past issues, so I could be wrong....

dreamcompiler 3y ago

About effing time. And thank you Alexandra Elbakyan because I'm sure you were a factor in this decision even if ACM won't admit it.

jameslarus 3y ago

[I am the editor-in-chief of CACM, in case that matters. https://cacm.acm.org/ https://cacm.acm.org/] Changing the economic basis of a thriving industry is a enormous challenge (how long has open source software been around?). ACM has publically committed to making all its content open-access by 2026 (https://www.acm.org/publications/openaccess https://www.acm.org/publications/openaccess). I'm still waiting to hear Microsoft or Facebook make a similar commitment (-:. It has taken years because the worldwide research community must change from the "readers and libraries pay" model to "writers pay." For ACM, the transition is well underway. Many ACM conferences are now open access, and I'm happy to say that CACM is now fully open access as well (previously, it was just the older issues). Opening CACM's content and creating a new website was a deliberate decision to try to make CACM into a central forum for the technical community to exchange ideas and debate issues. ACM is well aware that this community is orders of magnitude larger than its membership, so opening access to its flagship publication is an essential first step. There are many technical websites and blogs online; most are focused on specific topics and areas or intended for readers who may not have a technical background. CACM's remit is computing in general, and we assume our readers are technically literate. Please contribute (https://cacm.acm.org/author-guidelines/ https://cacm.acm.org/author-guidelines/). CACM offers a range of options: informal blog posts, short Viewpoint pieces, and longer Research and Practice articles. We would like to hear from you!