KAUST and ACM Sign New Transformative Open Access Agreement

New York, NY, August 19, 2020 —ACM, the Association for Computing Machinery, and King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) have entered into a new transformative open access agreement. The agreement, which runs for a three-year term beginning January 1, 2020, covers both access to and open access publication in ACM’s journals, proceedings and magazines for KAUST. This agreement represents the first transformative open access agreement for ACM with an institution in the Middle East.

J. K. Vijayakumar, Library Director at KAUST said, "KAUST is proud to be a pioneer of open access and to be aligned with global initiatives. Through efforts like this transformative agreement with ACM Publishing, we are helping shape a sustainable, responsible approach to ensuring that our research on world-leading scientific journals is available to all." More about KAUST OA publishing options can be found here.

Under the new agreement, faculty and students of KAUST will continue to receive unlimited and unrestricted access to all articles in the ACM Digital Library during the three-year term. Beginning January 1, 2020 for the term of the agreement, articles with corresponding authors from KAUST published in ACM journals, conference proceedings and magazines will be made openly available at no cost to the authors.

Additionally, ACM will make deposits into institutional repositories for all co-authors from KAUST. The new agreement also expands the range of rights authors retain when publishing with ACM.

This new transformative open access publishing model was developed in collaboration with the University of California System, Carnegie Mellon University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Iowa State University and the University of Minnesota

“What began as a conversation at an open access workshop led to many long hours of truly collaborative work and has resulted in a model that we believe has the potential to transform ACM’s publications program,” said Scott Delman, ACM Director of Publications. “We believe that the new model, which we’re calling ACM OPEN, brings the computing community closer to a sustainable future where all scholarly articles are immediately open at the time of publication.”

This new agreement expresses ACM’s commitment to open access publication and its transition to become a fully open access research publisher within the next five years. ACM is extending the principles of the ACM OPEN access model to universities throughout the world.

About ACM

ACM, the Association for Computing Machinery, is the world's largest educational and scientific computing society, uniting educators, researchers, and professionals to inspire dialogue, share resources, and address the field's challenges. ACM strengthens the computing profession's collective voice through strong leadership, promotion of the highest standards, and recognition of technical excellence. ACM supports the professional growth of its members by providing opportunities for life-long learning, career development, and professional networking.