About ACM Publications

ACM has made the decision to cease print publication for ACM’s journals and transactions as of January 2024. There were several motivations for this change: ACM wants to be as environmentally friendly as possible; print journals lack the new features and functionality of the electronic versions in the ACM Digital Library; and print subscriptions, which have been declining for years, have now reached a level where the time was right to sunset print. Please contact [email protected] should you have any questions.

ACM publications had an impressive showing in the newest Journal Citation Reports from Clarivate Analytics. ACM Computing Surveys continued its impressive ascent, receiving an impact factor of 23.8, up from 16.6 in 2023, and placing it first out of the 143 journals in the Computer Science, Theory & Methods category. Communications of the ACM boasted continued strong performance, with an impact factor of 11.1, placing it first in the Computer Science, Hardware & Architecture category for the second year in a row; third of 131 titles in the Computer Science, Software Engineering category; and sixth of 143 journals in the Computer Science, Theory & Methods category.

In a major step in its transition to fully Open Access (OA) publication of all content on the ACM Digital Library, ACM has transitioned the International Conference Proceedings Series (ICPS) to a fully OA publishing model, as of January 2024. In the new model, all ICPS papers are made OA upon publication, and existing ICPS papers will be converted to OA. Some authors who are not at ACM Open institutions will be required to pay Article Processing Charges (APCs). The model will apply to all conferences for which the Call for Papers issued on or after January 1, 2024.

ACM has opened the articles published during the first 50 years of its publishing program, from 1951 through the end of 2000, These articles are now open and freely available to view and download via the ACM Digital Library. ACM’s first 50 years backfile contains more than 117,500 articles on a wide range of computing topics. In addition to articles published between 1951 and 2000, ACM has also opened related and supplemental materials including data sets, software, slides, audio recordings, and videos.

Proceedings of the ACM (PACM) is a journal series that launched in 2017. The series was created in recognition of the fact that conference-centric publishing disadvantages the CS community with respect to other scientific disciplines when competing with researchers from other disciplines for top science awards and career progression, and the fact that top ACM conferences have demonstrated high quality and high impact on the field. See PACMs on Programming Languages, Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies, Measurement and Analysis of Computing Systems, and HCI.

Proceedings of the ACM on Software Engineering (PACMSE) is a new Gold Open Access journal publishing top-quality, original research on all aspects of software engineering, from requirements elicitation to quality assessment, design, maintenance, evolution, and deployment. PACMSE covers a broad range of topics and methods that help conceive, create, and maintain better software be it embedded, cloud-based, mobile and ubiquitous, or runs on conventional computers. The journal operates in close collaboration with the Special Interest Group on Software Engineering (SIGSOFT).

Today’s Internet of Things (IoT) devices are bulky, expensive, require battery maintenance, and involve costly installation. In contrast, the interactive stickers introduced in Sustainable Interactive Wireless Stickers: From Materials to Devices to Applications are low maintenance, inexpensive, and easy to deploy. Focusing on power, form factor, and cost as system design parameters, Nivedita Arora describes stickers that have simple circuitry and can sustain themselves while wirelessly communicating and responding to various human Interactions. 

Calculated Imagery: A History of Computer Graphics in Hollywood Cinema by Mark J. P. Wolf is a comprehensive history of computer graphics in Hollywood cinema. As the first such work of its kind, it is an essential reference for anyone interested in the history of cinema, visual effects, or computer graphics, and the industries of which they are a part. Throughout the book, the histories of individuals, companies, films, and computer graphics techniques are explored in detail, as well as changes in the visual effects (VFX) industry itself over time.

Software obfuscation is used in cryptography to transform source code to make it unintelligible without altering what it computes. As a software security mechanism, it is essential that software obfuscation have a firm mathematical foundation. In Indistinguishability Obfuscation from Well-Studied Assumptions, Aayush Jain uses the research which earned him the ACM Dissertation Award to establish the feasibility of mathematically rigorous software obfuscation from well-studied hardness conjectures. The mathematical object that the author constructs, indistinguishability obfuscation, is considered a theoretical “master tool” in the context of cryptography.

Formal Verification of Just-in-Time Compilation by Aurèle Barrière outlines a methodology to develop formally verified Just-in-Time compilers. These compilers often produce fast executions, so much so that their use has grown greatly for dynamic programming languages. Most modern web browsers today use Just-in-Time compilation to speed up the execution of the JavaScript programs they execute. However, the techniques used in Just-in-Time compilers can be particularly complex. To bring formal verification to Just-in-Time compilation, the book identifies a set of specific verification challenges and presents novel solutions for each of them.

If you regularly work with open-source code or produce software for a large organization, you're already familiar with many of the challenges posed by collaborative programming at scale. And the scale of the problem has gotten much worse. This is what led a group of researchers at MSR (Microsoft Research) to take on the task of complicated merges as a grand program-repair challenge—one they believed might be addressed at least in part by machine learning. To understand the thinking that led to this effort and then follow where that led, Erik Meijer and Terry Coatta spoke with three of the leading figures in the MSR research effort, called DeepMerge

ACM Queue’s "Research for Practice" serves up expert-curated guides to the best of computing research, and relates these breakthroughs to the challenges that software engineers face every day. In this installment, Research for Practice covers the topic of deterministic record-and-replay. Deterministic record-and-replay technologies enable a faithful re-execution of a program that ran in the past. But accomplishing this requires that any nondeterministic inputs to the program be logged during execution. The selection of techniques presented here is curated by Andrew Quinn, Assistant Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at UC Santa Cruz.

The ACM International Conference Proceeding Series (ICPS) provides a mechanism to publish the contents of conferences, technical symposia and workshops and thereby increase their visibility among the international computing community. The goal of this program is to enable conferences and workshops to cost effectively produce print proceedings for their attendees, while also providing maximum dissemination of the material through electronic channels, specifically, the ACM Digital Library.

Overleaf is a free, cloud-based, collaborative authoring tool that provides an ACM LaTeX authoring template. Authors can write using Rich Text mode or regular Source mode. The platform automatically compiles the document while an author writes, so the author can see what the finished file will look like in real time. The template allows authors to submit manuscripts easily to ACM from within the Overleaf platform.

Anyone listed as Author on an ACM paper must meet certain criteria, including making substantial intellectual contributions to some components of the original work and drafting and/or revising the paper.

Authors submitting papers for peer-review to ACM publications will represent that the paper submitted is original; that the work submitted is not currently under review at any other publication venue; that they have the rights and intent to publish the work in the venue to which it is submitted; and that any prior publications on which this work is based are documented appropriately. 

Read the entire set of criteria in the Policy on Authorship.

The Conflict of Interest policy outlines what constitutes a conflict of interest (COI) for ACM publications; who is in a position to identify and report potential COIs; and how a potential COI should be managed. The policy applies to any material that is formally reviewed or refereed as per ACM policy; awards based on content published in ACM venues; and authors, reviewers, editors, conference program committee members, judges, and other persons associated with ACM-published materials.

The policy provides specific guidelines for common instances with the goal of assisting in the process of identifying and resolving potential conflicts of interest. It also describes how the policy can be augmented, and how exceptions may be approved.

ACM Transactions on Reconfigurable Technology and Systems (TRETS) welcomes Vaughn Betz as its new Editor-in-Chief for the term April 1, 2025 to March 30, 2028. Betz is a Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Toronto and a Distinguished Visiting Professor, Cerebras Systems.

ACM Transactions on Social Computing (TSC) welcomes new Co-Editors-in-Chief Xiaoming Fu (University of Göttingen, Germany) and James Evans (University of Chicago) for a term starting May 1, 2025.