The Blue Diamond - September 2022

CONTENTS AT A GLANCE:

Introduction

Welcome to the September 2022 Issue of the Blue Diamond newsletter. It’s been a busy and productive year at ACM Publications so far. This issue includes updates about ACM’s journals, new publications under development, the ongoing transition to open access, ACM Publications finances, major decisions taken by ACM’s Publications Board related to copyrights for ACM authors, the creation of a new ACM Digital Library Board, the ORCID mandate for all ACM authors, and other articles we hope you will find both interesting and relevant.

As always, if you have any questions, comments, or requests related to any aspect of ACM Publications initiatives, please don’t hesitate to reach out to me directly at the email address provided below.

Sincerely,

Scott Delman
Director of Publications
Email: [email protected]

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Improved Impact Factors

The initial pilot for ACM OPEN was launched at the end of January 2020 with multi-year agreements with the University of California, Carnegie Mellon University, MIT, and Iowa State University. Since then, ACM staff members have conducted over 150 webinars and Zoom presentations for institutions interested in learning more about ACM's new model, and to date ACM has signed multi-year agreements with approximately 90 institutions from the Americas, Europe, Middle East, Africa, and Asia, with hundreds of additional institutions currently evaluating the model.

The journals of ACM demonstrated strong performance in the latest Journal Citation Reports from Clarivate Analytics, released on June 28, 2022. Of the 36 ACM journals indexed in the JCR, 32 saw impact factor increases in the latest release. 12 ACM titles are in the first quartile in one or more JCR subject categories.

Flagship title Communications of the ACM (CACM) excelled across its categories, receiving an impact factor of 14.065, placing it first of 110 journals in the Computer Science, Software Engineering category; second of 55 in the Computer Science, Hardware & Architecture category; and fifth of 109 in the Computer Science, Theory & Methods category.

Other highlights include ACM Computing Surveys (CSUR) with an impact factor of 14.324, a 39% increase over the previous year’s 10.282 and placing it third out of 109 journals in the Computer Science, Theory & Methods category. ACM Transactions on Intelligent Systems and Technology (TIST) more than doubled for an impact factor of 10.489, placing it 13th of 145 journals in the Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence category and 36th of 163 in the Computer Science, Information Systems category. ACM Transactions on Graphics (TOG) increased its impact factor to 7.403, placing it 10th of 110 journals in the Computer Science, Software Engineering category.

ACM applauds the recent announcement from Clarivate that all journals in the Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI), including 13 ACM titles, will receive impact factors in the 2023 JCR release. ACM journals indexed in ESCI include several titles from ACM’s innovative Proceedings of the ACM (PACM) journal series, which publishes conference papers that have undergone a peer-review process comparable to that of traditional journals.

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For over 68 years, ACM has asked its authors to transfer the copyright of their articles to allow ACM to act as a steward of their published work, manage the publication process, respond to requests related to third-party rights and permissions, and defend their published works against misconduct such as plagiarism or copyright infringement.

During the June 2022 meeting of the ACM Publications Board, the ACM Publications Board voted to end the “copyright transfer” option starting January 1, 2023. After that date, when authors’ works are accepted into any of ACM’s publications, the author-designated “corresponding author” will receive an acceptance email that includes a link to ACM’s Rights System.

This system currently offers corresponding authors an option that enables them to transfer the copyright of their work to ACM and includes an obligation that ACM will defend the work against improper use by third parties. In practice, ACM defends all ACM-published works against improper use when allegations of publication-related misconduct are brought to light. However, the distinction that exists in the current policy does not exist in practice. For this reason, the Publications Board voted to remove this option.

In addition, ACM’s Copyright Policy will be updated and simplified to make it easier to understand and to be more user-friendly.

Lastly, another major change relating to how ACM handles rights and permissions is that ACM has adopted STM Permissions Guidelines, which simplifies the process for third parties (including researchers) to reuse ACM published content in new works under development. This is a broad-based publisher initiative that includes the vast majority of publishers in computing literature. Other signatories of these guidelines are listed here.

All of these steps should simplify the process of publishing with ACM, and we welcome your feedback after the above steps have been implemented.

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New Staff Hires

ACM has hired three new senior publishing professionals for its headquarters staff to continue building and improving the quality of ACM’s journal portfolio and to accelerate the transition of ACM’s publications program to an open access model.

Sara Kate Heukerott joins ACM as Associate Director of Publications, Journals. In this new role, Sara Kate is responsible for a portfolio of over 60 peer-reviewed journals and will be working closely with Publications staff and other departments to strengthen and grow ACMs journals. Sara Kate is an experienced publishing professional and comes from Springer Nature, where she worked for nearly twelve years, most recently as Executive Editor responsible for the Materials Science and Applied Physics journals team.

Sean Pidgeon joins ACM as Senior Editor for New Publications. Sean is an experienced publishing professional, having served in several senior editorial roles at Oxford University Press, John Wiley & Sons, and Nature Publishing Group (now Springer Nature). Sean will be responsible for working with the New Publications Committee (NPC) of the ACM Publications Board. Since joining ACM last fall, Sean has already made significant progress by working closely with the NPC and Publications Board to launch ACM Journal of Responsible Computing (JRC).

Wyatt Reynolds joins ACM as Director of Digital Library & Advertising Sales. Wyatt joins ACM from Oxford University Press, where he worked as regional sales manager and, previously, as an institutional sales representative. Wyatt has experience leading a top-performing sales team as well as relationships with librarians and consortia leaders across North America. Wyatt also represented OUP at journals bids in North America and served on numerous working groups, including those focused on Open access and sales business models.

ACM is looking forward to leveraging the experience of these three new experienced staff members. Contact information for all ACM headquarters publications staff can be found on ACM’s website.

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Open Access Update

2022 has been a significant year for ACM’s transition to open access. In April, ACM opened the backfile making 117,500 articles from the first fifty years of ACM’s publishing freely available via the Digital Library.

Another key development is the rapid growth of the ACM Open program. Recently, Tsinghua University and the Chinese Academy of Sciences recently signed on, as well as academic consortia in South Africa, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Finland, the United States, and Sweden. Recent standalone agreements have been made with King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico, Yale University, the Tokyo University of Science, Purdue University, the Georgia Institute of Technology, Princeton University, and the Australian National University. ACM has also reached agreements with several corporate clients including Amazon, Intel Corporation, MITRE Corporation, and Nokia.

With the acceleration of the program, ACM estimates that approximately 25% of the research articles published in 2022 will be covered under an ACM Open agreement.

A complete listing of institutions currently participating in ACM Open can be found here. If your institution has not yet signed on, please contact your library to advocate for participation, and feel free to contact us at [email protected] for more information about this new model. ACM is committed to an Open Access future. ACM Open is how we will get there.

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ACM Council Establishes Digital Library Board

In 2021, the ACM Council formed the ACM Digital Library Board to oversee the design and operations of the ACM Digital Library and supporting technology platforms. The charge of the board includes publication production systems, submission and reviewing systems, repositories for articles and supplementary content, and the user experience of the Digital Library. The oversight responsibility of the DL Board includes advocating for end users (authors, researchers, and other stakeholders); providing input on functionality, features, and deliverable priorities; providing feedback on user interface and search; providing guidance on new features, tools, and other needs; and helping with monitoring progress on metrics. The new DL Board is composed of ACM members who are authors and users of the Digital Library in diverse settings globally and includes members having liaison positions with the SIG Governing Board and the Publications Board.

Jack Davidson serves as Chair of the ACM Digital Library Board for a three-year term from July 1, 2021–June 30, 2024.

In addition to creating the new DL Board, ACM has also restructured headquarters staffing to better support digital publication and the future of the ACM Digital Library. Staff have been realigned to create a new Digital Library Department that more effectively consolidates focus on the DL than before. This reorganization is not a short-term fix for the DL but represents a significant and ongoing effort to continuously improve the ACM DL as capabilities and expectations evolve.

Wayne Graves is the ACM Digital Library Director and is responsible for strategy, management, and interfacing with both staff and external entities involved in ACM DL development and production.

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Publication Finances

A primary goal of ACM has been to maintain full transparency regarding the subject of publication finances—a goal which has become ever more imperative considering our ongoing transition to open access publishing as well as the interest of our membership, institutional subscribers, and the computing research community. Here, we continue that transparency with our annual update on ACM Publications finances, following up on our initial report published in the May 2020 issue of Communications of the ACM. This report summarizes income and expenses for the 2020 calendar year. Specific notes explain significant changes between 2019 and 2020.

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ACM Digital Library Adds Just Accepted Articles

Just Accepted Articles are now rolling out for all ACM Journals in the ACM Digital Library. The Author’s Accepted Manuscript (AAM) has gone through peer review and precedes any minor corrections or typesetting completed by the production department for the journal. The AAM is made available just after acceptance and can be found under the "Just Accepted" tab on all ACM Journal landing pages in the ACM DL (e.g., dl.acm.org/csur), and is included in search results. This AAM carries the article's permanent DOI and can be cited immediately. Once the version of record becomes available and is assigned to its proper issue, the ACM Digital Library will be updated accordingly.

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Recent ICPS Retractions

Two serious cases of ethical misconduct have resulted in the retraction of proceedings published in ACM’s International Conference Proceedings Series (ICPS).

ICIMTech2021

On September 9, 2021, IEEE contacted ACM with a claim that the Sixth International Conference on Information Management and Technology (ICIMTech2021), published by ACM in the ICPS, was a fake event, and that the purported conference had used the name and front matter of the real conference published by IEEE under the same name.

Upon investigation, it was determined that the Program Chair listed in the ICPS application had used a pseudonym. This person failed to answer any of the questions put to them during the investigation, and outreach to the authors of the papers published in ICPS also elicited no response. Subsequently, ACM’s Ethics & Plagiarism Committee concluded that the combination of fraudulent front matter, lack of response from the Program Chair, and lack of response from the authors cast serious doubt on the integrity of the conference, and thus the authenticity of the proceedings.

The E&P Committee made a formal recommendation that the entire proceedings be retracted, and a motion to this effect was carried at the Publications Board meeting on December 16, 2021. A retraction notice was posted on the conference home page on the ACM Digital Library.

IHIP2018

On August 12, 2021, the ACM Ethics and Plagiarism Committee received a claim that a paper published by ACM in the Proceedings of the 2018 International Conference on Information Hiding and Image Processing (IHIP2018) was computer-generated.

The E&P Committee investigated and found that the paper was scientifically meaningless and was likely to have been generated by a computer. The listed “author” did not respond to ACM’s inquiries, and it was discovered that three other papers ostensibly written by the same person had recently been removed from two different publishers' websites for similar reasons. A request to the Program Committee for the original reviews of the paper elicited what were deemed to be counterfeited review materials.

Given the clear evidence of fraud, as well as doubts arising from ACM’s communications with the conference organizers, the E&P Committee made a formal recommendation that the entire proceedings be retracted, and a motion to this effect was carried at the Publications Board meeting on December 16, 2021. A retraction notice was posted on the conference home page on the ACM Digital Library.

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ORCID Mandate

ACM’s ORCID requirement is now in place for all ACM journal authors and this requirement will expand to ACM conference and ICPS conference authors in 2022. If you have not already done so, please set up a unique author ID (ORCID) at orcid.org/register and connect it to your ACM Profile. ORCIDs allow us to identify authors more reliably, even when there are variants in the use of their names or when multiple authors share the same name.

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ACM Publications Welcome New Editors-in-Chief

James Larus, a Professor of Computer Science at EPFL Switzerland, has been named Editor-in-Chief of Communications of the ACM. Accepting the role in late 2021, Larus has been working behind the scenes to dramatically revamp Communications' website and mission.

In his Editor’s Letter in the July 2022 issue of Communications, Larus wrote of taking the magazine back to its roots as a forum for computer scientists from all disciplines to share their collective findings, research and opinions. He plans to build a web-first model that will post editorial content, timely news articles, and commentary. The monthly print magazine will publish the best of that content.

ACM Transactions on Evolutionary Learning and Optimization (TELO) has named Manuel López-Ibáñez Co-Editor-in-Chief alongside founding Co-Editor-in Chief Juergen Branke from April 1, 2022 - April 30, 2023. López-Ibáñez is Beatriz Galindo Senior Distinguished Researcher at the University of Málaga, and Branke is a Professor at the University of Warwick.

ACM Transactions on Recommender Systems (TORS) has named Li Chen and Dietmar Jannach Co-Editors-in-Chief of the new journal for the three-year term from September 1, 2021–August 31, 2024. Chen is an Associate Professor at Hong Kong Baptist University, and Jannach is a Professor at the University of Klagenfurt.

ACM Transactions on Multimedia Computing, Communications, and Applications (TOMM) has named Abdulmotaleb El Saddik its new Editor-in-Chief. The appointment is from February 1, 2022–January 31, 2025. Abdulmotaleb is a Professor in the School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the University of Ottawa.

ACM Transactions on Computing Education (TOCE) has named Amy J. Ko its new Editor-in-Chief. The appointment is from December 1, 2021–November 30, 2024. Amy is a Professor and Informatics Program Chair at the University of Washington.

Journal of the ACM (JACM) has named Venkatesan Guruswami its new Editor-in-Chief. The appointment is from December 1, 2021–November 30, 2024. Venkatesan is a computer science Professor at Carnegie Mellon University.

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New ACM Journals Open for Submissions

ACM Journal on Autonomous Transportation Systems (JATS) aims to cover topics in design, analysis, and the control of autonomous transportation systems. The area of autonomous transportation systems is at a critical point where the issues of data, models, computation, and scale are increasingly important. Multiple disciplines are approaching the problems of traffic operations, road safety, sustainability, and efficient road traffic and vehicle management which require communication cooperation. Interdisciplinary research in communications and networking, control systems, machine learning, traffic engineering, transportation systems, and unmanned aerial systems are also of interest. Co-Editor-in-Chief Satish V. Ukkusuri is a Professor in the Lyles School of Civil Engineering at Purdue University. Co-Editor-in-Chief Vaneet Aggarwal is an Associate Professor with the School of Industrial Engineering and the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering (by courtesy), at Purdue University.

Games: Research and Practice (Games) offers a lighthouse for games research—a central reference point that defines the state of the art on games and playable media across academic research and industry practice. Inclusive in community, discipline, method, and game form, it publishes major reviews, tutorials, and advances on games and playable media that are both practically useful and grounded in robust evidence and argument, alongside case studies, opinions, and dialogues on new developments that will change games. It embraces open science and scholarship and actively champions new and underrepresented voices in games and playable media. Co-Editor-in-Chief Sebastian Deterding is a Professor at the University of York. Co-Editor-in-Chief Kenny Mitchell is a Professor at Edinburgh Napier University.

ACM Journal on Responsible Computing (JRC) will publish high-quality original research at the intersection of computing, ethics, information, law, policy, responsible innovation, and social responsibility from a wide range of convergent, interdisciplinary, multidisciplinary, and transdisciplinary perspectives. The journal welcomes papers using any or a combination of computational, conceptual, qualitative, quantitative, and other methods to make contributions to knowledge, methods, practice, and theory, broadly defined. Editor-in-Chief Kenneth R. Fleischmann is a Professor and Director of Undergraduate Studies at the University of Texas at Austin School of Information.

ACM Transactions on Recommender Systems (TORS) will publish high quality papers that address various aspects of recommender systems research, from algorithms to the user experience, to questions of the impact and value of such systems on a quarterly basis. The journal will take a holistic view on the field and call for contributions from different subfields of computer science and information systems, such as machine learning, data mining, information retrieval, web-based systems, data science and big data, and human-computer interaction. Moreover, interdisciplinary research works will be welcome as well. Co-Editor-in-Chief Li Chen is an Associate Professor at Hong Kong Baptist University. Co-Editor-in-Chief Dietmar Jannach is a Professor at the University of Klagenfurt.

ACM and BCS (The Chartered Institute for IT) began co-publishing the journal Formal Aspects of Computing (FAC) in 2022. Formerly published by Springer Nature for BCS, the journal's scope includes fundamental computational concepts, fault-tolerant design, theorem-proving support, state-exploration tools, formal underpinning of widely used notations and methods, history of formal methods, and more. With the new agreement, the journal will transition to Gold Open Access status. Editor-in-Chief Jim Woodcock is the Head of the Department of Computer Science, University of York.

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New ACM Journals Approved

Inspired by the broad agenda of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), ACM Journal on Computing and Sustainable Communities (JCSS) aims to publish significant and original research from a broad array of computer and information sciences, social sciences, environmental sciences, and engineering fields that support the growth of sustainable societies worldwide, especially including underrepresented and marginalized communities. Editor-in-Chief Lakshminarayanan Subramanian is a professor in the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences at New York University. For further information, contact the Editor-in-Chief of JCSS at [email protected].

The ACM Publications Board is pleased to announce approval of a new PACM title, Proceedings of the ACM on Networking (PACMNET). PACMNET will publish research papers presenting significant and novel research results on emerging computer networks and their applications, especially encouraging submissions that present new technologies, novel experimentation, creative use of networking technologies, and new insights made possible using analysis. In addition to papers on network technologies, the journal will also solicit papers on network properties such as policy and economics, security and privacy, reliability and availability, performance, and energy efficiency. The journal will publish on a quarterly basis starting June 2023.

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New Titles From ACM Books

Probabilistic and Causal Inference: The Works of Judea Pearl by Hector Geffner, Rita Dechter, and Joseph Halpern, contains the original articles that led to Pearl's 2011 A.M. Turing Award, divided into four parts: heuristic search; probabilistic reasoning; causality, first period (1988–2001); and causality, recent period (2002–2020). Each of these parts starts with an Introduction written by Pearl. The volume also contains original, contributed articles by leading researchers that analyze, extend, or assess the influence of Pearl’s work in different fields

Circuits, Packets, and Protocols: Entrepreneurs and Computer Communications, 1968-1988, by James L. Pelkey, Andrew L. Russell, and Loring Robbins, tells the story of the entrepreneurs who were able to harness and join two factors: the energy of computer science researchers supported by governments and universities, and the tremendous commercial demand for internetworking computers. Included are unpublished interviews from the 1980s with over 80 computing industry pioneers.

Applied Affective Computing, by Leimin Tian, Sharon Oviatt, Michal Muszynski, Brent C. Chamberlain, Jennifer Healey, and Akane Sano, discusses this nascent field that sits at the cross-section between artificial intelligence and social and behavioral science. This book offers readers an overview to the state of the art and emerging themes in affective computing using comprehensive reviews of existing approaches to affective computing systems and social signal processing.

In Theories of Programming: The Life and Works of Tony Hoare, editors Cliff B. Jones and Jayadev Misra present the essence of the 1980 A.M. Turing Award laureate's various works—the quest for effective abstractions—both in his own words and in chapters written by leading experts in the field, including many of his research collaborators. This volume also contains biographical material, his Turing Award lecture, the transcript of an interview, and some of his foundational papers.

In The Handbook on Socially Interactive Agents, editors Birgit Lugrin, Catherine Pelachaud, and David Traum provide a comprehensive overview of the research fields of embodied conversational agents, intelligent virtual agents, and social robotics. Socially interactive agents, whether virtually or physically embodied, are autonomous agents that are able to perceive an environment—including people or other agents—then reason, decide how to interact, and express attitudes such as emotions, engagement, or empathy.

Software: A Technical History, by Kim W. Tracy, examines such areas as fundamentals, operating systems, programming languages, programming environments, networking, and databases from their earliest beginnings to their modern variants. Case studies illustrate UNIX, APL, SAGE, GNU Emacs, Autoflow, internet protocols, System R, and others. Extensive problems and suggested projects enable readers to deeply delve into the history of software in areas that interest them most.

Weaving Fire into Form: Aspirations for Tangible and Embodied Interaction, by Brygg Ullmer, Orit Shaer, Ali Mazalek, and Caroline Hummels, investigates multiple facets of the emerging discipline of Tangible, Embodied, and Embedded Interaction (TEI). It explores the interweaving of the physical and digital toward understanding some of their wildly varying hybrid forms and behaviors. Spanning conceptual, philosophical, cognitive, design, and technical aspects of interaction, this book charts both history and aspirations for the future of TEI.

Spatial Gems, Volume 1, by John Krumm, Andreas Züfle, and Cyrus Shahabi, presents fundamental new techniques for understanding and processing geospatial data. These “spatial gems” articulate and highlight insightful ideas that often remain unstated in graduate textbooks, and which are not the focus of research papers. They teach us how to do something useful with spatial data whether in algorithms, code, or equations. With contributions from pioneering researchers, this volume will serve students, researchers, professors, and developers in the field alike.

In Democratizing Cryptography: The Work of Whitfield Diffie and Martin Hellman, editor Rebecca Slayton tells the story of the inventors of public key cryptography, an innovation that ultimately changed the world. This is the first book to provide a comprehensive insiders’ perspective on the full impacts of public key cryptography, including six original chapters by nine distinguished scholars. Beginning with an original joint biography of the lives and careers of Diffie and Hellman, the volume includes particularly influential articles by Diffie and Hellman, as well as newly transcribed interviews and Turing Award Lectures by both Diffie and Hellman.

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Survey on Research Publishing in AI and Machine Learning

Are you a researcher in AI/ML? Please help us with our market research by completing the ACM Survey on Research Publishing in Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning.

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