ACM Publications Board
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| ACM Publications Board | |
|---|---|
| Name | ACM Publications Board |
| Formation | 1947 |
| Type | Professional body |
| Headquarters | New York City |
| Parent organization | Association for Computing Machinery |
ACM Publications Board The ACM Publications Board is the body within the Association for Computing Machinery responsible for oversight of the society's journals, magazines, conference proceedings, and digital library policies. It works with editors, publishers, and committees to shape publication strategy across venues such as Communications of the ACM, Journal of the ACM, and numerous SIG-sponsored titles, interfacing with stakeholders including IEEE Computer Society, Springer Nature, and academic institutions like Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford University, and University of California, Berkeley.
History
The Publications Board traces its roots to early postwar coordination of computing literature involving organizations such as Association for Computing Machinery (founding body), collaborations with Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers predecessors and partnerships with publishers like ACM Press and Elsevier. In the 1960s and 1970s the Board engaged with editors of foundational venues including Communications of the ACM, Journal of the ACM, ACM Transactions on Programming Languages and Systems, and worked alongside SIGs such as SIGPLAN, SIGGRAPH, and SIGMOD. During the 1990s and 2000s the Board responded to shifts exemplified by initiatives from National Science Foundation, debates involving arXiv and PubMed Central, and cross-society dialogues with Royal Society and American Association for the Advancement of Science on digital access. More recent decades saw interactions with global projects like Plan S, negotiation with commercial vendors including Elsevier and Wiley-Blackwell, and coordination with university consortia such as CARL and Jisc to address open access, preservation, and digital archiving with partners like CLOCKSS and Portico.
Mission and Responsibilities
The Board's mission aligns with the charter of the Association for Computing Machinery to advance computing as a science and profession, taking responsibility for stewardship of peer-reviewed literature across venues such as ACM Transactions on Computer Systems, ACM Transactions on Graphics, ACM Transactions on Database Systems, and Proceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages. Responsibilities include appointing editors for flagship publications like Communications of the ACM and Journal of the ACM, setting editorial policies in consultation with SIGs such as SIGCHI, SIGCOMM, SIGARCH, and ensuring compliance with best practices promoted by organizations like Committee on Publication Ethics and standards bodies including ISO committees related to digital formats.
Organization and Governance
The Board operates under the bylaws of the Association for Computing Machinery and coordinates with governance structures like the ACM Council and Executive Committee. It comprises elected and appointed members drawn from academia—including faculty from Carnegie Mellon University, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, University of Toronto—industry leaders from companies such as Google, Microsoft Research, IBM Research, and representatives of SIGs like SIGSOFT and SIGMETRICS. Governance processes interface with the ACM Nominating Committee, Audit Committee, and legal counsel, and adhere to policies influenced by federal regulations like those overseen by the National Institutes of Health when handling research funded by agencies including DARPA and European Research Council projects.
Publications and Programs
The Board oversees a portfolio that includes flagship journals (Journal of the ACM), magazines (Communications of the ACM), SIG proceedings (Proceedings of the ACM series), and specialty titles such as ACM Computing Surveys, ACM Transactions on Algorithms, and conference proceedings for events like SIGGRAPH, CHI, KDD, SOSP, OSDI, SIGMOD, SC (Supercomputing Conference), POPL, and ICSE. It manages the ACM Digital Library alongside digital preservation initiatives with partners including CLOCKSS and Portico, and runs programs to support editors, reviewers, and authors collaborating with training providers like COPE and initiatives linked to funders such as National Science Foundation and Horizon Europe.
Policies and Standards
The Board sets editorial and ethical standards addressing peer review, conflict of interest, retraction, and data and code availability consistent with guidance from Committee on Publication Ethics and interoperable with repository services such as Zenodo, Figshare, and GitHub. Policy development has intersected with open access frameworks like Plan S and publisher negotiation strategies involving Springer Nature and Elsevier. Standards include formatting and metadata practices aligned with CrossRef, DOI assignment, indexing with Scopus and Web of Science, and accessibility guidelines reflecting standards from W3C.
Notable Decisions and Impact
Notable rulings by the Board affected the transition of multiple titles to hybrid or full open access models, influenced ACM's stance on author rights and copyright, and guided responses to controversies around conference publication and review practices highlighted at events like CHI and ICML. Decisions shaped adoption of artifact evaluation processes at venues such as ASPLOS and PLDI, spurred partnerships with archiving entities including CLOCKSS, and impacted metrics through interactions with indexing services like Google Scholar and Scopus. The Board's policy shifts have affected authors from institutions including Harvard University, Princeton University, California Institute of Technology, and corporations including Amazon and Meta Platforms.
Membership and Selection Process
Members are selected through ACM governance mechanisms involving nominations from the ACM Council, SIGs, and the Nominating Committee, with appointments ratified by the ACM Executive Committee. Eligibility typically includes senior editors, scholars from institutions such as Yale University and University of Oxford, and industry researchers from labs like Bell Labs and Xerox PARC. Selection emphasizes experience with editorial leadership at venues like Communications of the ACM, ACM Transactions, and major conferences including SIGGRAPH and NIPS (now NeurIPS), with terms and conflicts handled under ACM's bylaws and ethics frameworks used by organizations including COPE and university committees on research integrity.