About ACM OPEN
TL;DR: ACM’s transition to open access has implications for all SIGs, conferences, and communities — now and potentially through the next ~3–5 years.
ACM will be the first major publisher in Computer Science to transition to 100% Open Access (OA) by the end of 2025. This is a development that many in the ACM professional community have been waiting — and petitioning — for [1]. From a Pay-to-Read model, the ACM Digital Library will move to a Pay-to-Publish model. A phased transition is in progress and will be complete by January 1, 2026 [2].
There are numerous anticipated benefits that motivate this shift. Knowledge disseminated via ACM publishing venues will, with this shift, be freely accessible to all. Open access publications are better read and cited, which means individual contributions are expected to be better recognized and more impactful under ACM OPEN [2]. Further, the ACM OPEN model seeks to re-balance ACM revenues, such that institutions that publish more pay more, making this revenue generation model more equitable and sustainable than before. Finally, many institutions and funding agencies are beginning to mandate OA publication, making such a transition inevitable for the discipline overall.
So that our members, conferences, and discipline benefit from ACM OPEN as much as possible, and make a smooth transition, we aim to keep the SIGs updated and moving forward in alignment with ACM-led changes. The background and finer details are on ACM’s website [2]. The current OA plan assumes that all of the top 1,000 institutions that currently subscribe and publish with ACM will transition to ACM OPEN, and that most of the current 1,600+ institutions that publish very little will also transition to ACM OPEN, at a lower price than they are paying now. If the shift goes as per plan, individuals will not need to bear the costs for OA.
Read below to understand the implications of this plan from different perspectives: of readers, authors, representatives of institutions, organizers of ACM venues, and members of SIGs/ACM.
As Readers
Individuals who have been paying for access to read the ACM DL will no longer need to do so. By January 1, 2026, the entire DL will be accessible to all.
As Authors
Once the OA transition is complete, there will be only three ways to publish with ACM: ACM OPEN, Article Processing Charge (APC), or waivers. If you are a corresponding author (this can be any of the co-authors)…
- and located at an institution enrolled in ACM OPEN (see [3]), there will be no additional costs for you to bear. Note that this list of institutions is continually growing.
- in a country listed by ACM as one of the countries with pre-approved waivers (see [5]), there will be no additional costs for you to bear. Note that authors will not need to request these waivers; these countries will be set up with complimentary ACM Open Access.
- in a country listed by ACM as eligible for a 50% waiver (see [5]). The system will ideally recognize these authors and apply the discount during the payment process.
- and not covered by the cases listed above, you will need to cover the APC yourself, potentially splitting this among authors as/how they prefer. If you do not have access to APC funding — either through ACM OPEN or through research-funding institutions, you may be eligible for a needs-based waiver for which you can write to apcwaivers@acm.org. ACM is considering a discretionary waiver program that would give journal and conference leaders a set number of waivers to be handed out each year; the program is under development and will depend on the continued growth and financial sustainability of the ACM OPEN model.
The best way to eliminate financial implications for individual authors as ACM transitions to a Pay-to-Publish model is to invest in persuading institutions to sign ACM OPEN licenses. Also, authors could find out whether they may be able to cover APCs via research grants from funding agencies with OA mandates and/or institutions with the funds to support authors’ APCs.
As Institutional Representatives
ACM’s goal from the new pricing model is to recover publication costs equitably. Institutions that publish more will now pay more, unlike in the previous model, which relied heavily on the DL income being distributed “evenly” across a long tail of ~2,700 institutions, even though 2/3 of the institutions did not publish very much with ACM and used the DL much less in comparison. The key challenge for ACM is to rebalance USD 21M+ of DL income from these institutions [6], to make the model “revenue-neutral” once fully adopted. The new model, if fully implemented with all 1,000 of the top publishing institutions joining, would shift about 85% of the total DL income needed to be sustainable to the top 1,000 institutions, but would still rely on the bottom 1,600 to make up roughly 15% of the total DL income needed for financial sustainability.
The model provides for unlimited OA publishing and DL reading for institutions, moving away from a “per article” APC transaction model, saving ACM and participating institutions time and administrative cost. Overall, the model aims to generate the same revenue as before, not seek a profit or surplus.
As of November 2023, ~800 institutions have transitioned. If 100% of the institutions publishing to the DL sign on, no APC will be necessary. Here again is a call to action: write to your department heads/managers and librarians, and urge them to sign up. You can use ACM’s draft call-to-action letter for this purpose.
As Organizers of ICPS, Journals, and Proceedings
Those contributing to the International Conference Proceeding Series (ICPS) will begin to be impacted very soon, with all ICPS venues transitioning to full OA on January 1, 2024 [4]. Many of our members organize and publish at in-cooperation conferences, which fall under ICPS. ICPS venues will not be impacted in 2024 if their calls for papers are published before December 31, 2023. Further, all ICPS venues will be required to transition to 100% OA in 2025.
All conference proceedings — including our sponsored and co-sponsored conferences as well as PACM HCI — will be flipped on December 31, 2025. Some journals are likely to be flipped earlier, in 2025. Post flip, accepted corresponding authors will need to be affiliated with ACM OPEN institutions, or utilize automatic country-based waivers/discounts, or request need-based waivers from ACM. If none of these is possible, then once the flip has taken place, journal contributors may be required to pay an APC of USD 1,300/1,800, and conference proceedings (including PACM HCI) contributors an APC of USD 1,000/700 (with the lower price for active ACM/SIG members).
Those in charge of overseeing these venues will need to keep a close watch on the impact this transition has on their author communities in coming years, possibly by analyzing authorship/participation trends over recent years and making cost projections. Budgeting for more waivers for member authors as we transition, such as through various community support mechanisms, might call for discussion. Supporting authors in requesting their institutions to sign up may be a course of action to consider.
As SIG Members
If we as a community wish for ACM to transition and become a sustainable OA Publisher, then it is crucial that we work together within our SIGs. SIGs aim to support their communities and conferences through this transition, from now until the full flip in 2026, and beyond. Reiterating, based on the above:
- Members who are corresponding authors in institutions that have not signed up for ACM OPEN and are not eligible for automatic waivers/discounts will need to pay the APC as venues transition. ACM/SIG members will pay lower rates than those who are non-members. See if you are impacted and bring this to the attention of your institutions (see the link to ACM’s draft call-to-action letter above).
- Conferences will likely need to adjust budgets accordingly; either they will lose some authors who are required but disinclined to pay the fee, or they may need to devise ways to address the change locally, such as through a waiver program of their own (potentially with support from the SIG), on top of the waivers assured by ACM. We need to talk about this.
- There is a possibility that SIG finances may be impacted, depending on the impact on DL revenues in coming years. Your SIGs will keep you posted.
As more of us across the SIGs and ACM get behind this change, the more we stand to benefit as collectively. There may be longer conversations to be had regarding the implications of this shift to open access more broadly, and ACM’s model in particular. There is no question that making knowledge accessible to all is a desirable change in the interest of open science. At the same time, it is possible that during the phased transition to ACM OPEN, authors may feel deterred from publishing if they come from less-resourced institutions and/or in the Global South (barring the countries that get automatic waivers). ACM is working towards getting more of these institutions on board, and having agreements in place in many of the countries that are not on the list for automatic waivers (such as Brazil and India), so that individual authors are not impacted by the transition.
We will do our best to provide supports in the form of information and/or financial resources to our members that need it, as and when the need arises. We have been publicizing information regarding ACM’s information sessions on the topic, and encourage you again to participate. Stay tuned for more updates and conversations, and please reach out if you have any questions.
Read Jonathan Aldrich’s invited post that continues this conversation and explains the benefits that traditional publishers provide.
Acknowledgements
Many thanks to the ACM SIG Governing Board for comprehensive discussions earlier this month, and to Scott Delman (ACM Director of Publications), Jonathan Aldrich (SGB Publications Advisor), Jens Palsberg (SGB Chair), Donna Cappo (ACM HQ SIG Liaison), Joseph Konstan, and SIGCHI Executive Committee members Luigi De Russis, Adriana Vivacqua, Naomi Yamashita, and Naveena Karusala for feedback on versions of the post.
References
[1] Petition · ACM Support Open Access · Change.org
[2] Open Access Publication & ACM
[3] Institutions Currently Participating in ACM OPEN
[4] Open Access Guidance for ICPS Authors
[6] ACM Publications Finances for 2021