The Blue Diamond - April 2023

CONTENTS AT A GLANCE:

Introduction

Welcome to the April 2023 Issue of The Blue Diamond. The new year is off to a running start and we have a lot of important initiatives to update you on, including important changes to ACM Publications Policies, significant progress with the ACM Open transition to Open Access publishing, ACM taking steps to launch new Publications in the areas of AI and ML, a 2023 push towards increased reproducibility and replicability of research results related to ACM Publications, our plans for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in ACM Publications, the launch of several new ACM journals and books, and more.

Scott Delman
Director of Publications
Email: [email protected]

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ACM Updates Publication Policies

In the second half of 2022, ACM embarked on an initiative to simplify and update many of ACM's Publications Policies and add new FAQ documents to answer the most important questions we receive from the community on a regular basis. This work is ongoing, but you can access ACM's updated policies here. The most important changes already updated on ACM's website can be found in:

In addition, ACM has developed a recently updated draft authorship policy to address questions raised by the community in connection with the use of AI and AI assisted tools (such as ChatGPT) and updating criteria for authorship and submission to ACM Publications. ACM is seeking feedback from the Community on this draft Authorship Policy.

Please take the survey and provide your feedback here. The ACM Publications Board will be reviewing the survey results and will be meeting on April 20 to discuss and vote on the policy proposal.

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ACM Open Update

ACM is delighted to announce that nearly 6,000 of the articles added to the Digital Library in 2022 were published Open Access, with most written by authors affiliated with an institution participating in ACM Open. This means approximately 25% of the articles published to the Digital Library in 2022 were published Open Access and the percentage of Open Access articles published by ACM is growing every day.

As of February 2023, more than 400 institutions globally have signed on to ACM Open. ACM has recently signed ACM Open licenses with the Heal-LINK consortium in Greece, CzecheLib in the Czech Republic, and the MALMAD consortium in Israel as well as signing standalone agreements with universities in Taiwan, Singapore, and the United States. We are close to concluding several agreements that would enable researchers at more than 500 institutions to publish an unlimited number of articles Open Access in the Digital Library.

A complete listing of institutions currently participating in ACM Open can be found here. If your institution has not yet signed on to ACM Open, 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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Developing a Publications Strategy for AI & MLs

Writing in the October 1950 issue of the journal Mind: A Quarterly Review of Psychology and Philosophy , Alan Turing expressed the hope that "machines will eventually compete with [humans] in all purely intellectual fields." Looking back over the past 73 years, it seems fair to say that progress toward Turing's expansive vision of Artificial Intelligence has been slow and at times hesitant. Indeed, it is commonly accepted that the field has struggled through two research "winters" (in 1974–1980 and 1987–1993), with shorter cold snaps in between and since.

Fast forward to April 2023, and most would agree that a combination of improved deep learning technology, huge increases in computing power, and the ubiquity of massive datasets for training purposes has ushered in a new AI "summer." At ACM, we hear anecdotally that a majority of students entering graduate programs in computer science are interested in pursuing studies in AI, Machine Learning, and related areas of data science. Ethical concerns surrounding the implementation of AI and ML are beginning to garner the attention they deserve. New consumer applications (ChatGPT and DALL.E require no further publicity here) continue to keep this technology in the public eye, while AI-driven approaches to, for example, the problem of protein folding, demonstrate the power of deep learning in solving some of the biggest challenges in science.

ACM has played a crucial role in supporting these dramatic developments. The fundamental and applied science that underpins our progress in AI and ML has consistently been published in conferences sponsored by SIGAI and SIGKDD, and in related ACM journals such as COLA, TAAS, TELO, TIIS, TIST, TKDD, and TORS. We also recognize that ACM's publications portfolio has in some respects been slow to adapt to the changing needs of the research community. With this in mind, we are prioritizing a number of initiatives aimed at developing a new publishing strategy for AI/ML:

  • A new ACM Publications Board task force on AI/ML will assess our positioning in this area and recommend specific actions to bolster our support for the research and practitioner community.
  • The ACM New Publications Committee is currently focusing on new publication proposals in various subdisciplines of AI/ML.
  • In addition, we continue to work with the Editors-in-Chief of our existing journals to make sure those publications are well positioned to support the needs of their respective segments of the AI research community.

We look forward to sharing further news of these developments with the ACM community in the coming months.

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Working with ACM EIG on Reproducibility and Replicability

For the past decade, ACM has been encouraging authors to submit software and data sets with their papers, and has been a leader in providing guidance to those communities interested in evaluating research artifacts. The ACM Digital Library's artifact badging system allows easy identification of articles that have provided artifacts such as software systems, scripts used to run experiments, input datasets, raw data collected in the experiment, or scripts used to analyze results and that have undergone various reproducibility and replicability checks.

In 2023, ACM Publications will be working closely with the EIG (Emerging Interest Group) on Reproducibility and Replicability to further these efforts. The EIG leadership will be facilitating a series of workshops for ACM Editors-in-Chief to reflect on the current state of reproducibility work in their publications and how best to support, facilitate, and reward this critical work.

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Sunsetting of ACM Transactions on Computer Systems (TOCS)

After 40 years of publishing high-quality research articles, ACM Transactions on Computer Systems (TOCS) will cease publication at the end of 2023. The journal has a rich history, having published 497 articles with 123 average citations per article and 1,658 average downloads per article. Led most recently by Michael Swift (University of Wisconsin, Madison, USA), the journal has published seminal work on RPC, LRPC, Opal, LFS, Scheduler Activations, and AFS among other subjects. TOCS officially closed for submissions on March 31, 20233, and the journal will publish its final issue in November 2023 After the journal's closure, authors of relevant papers are encouraged to submit to ACM's many specialist journals on computer systems such as ACM Journal on Emerging Technologies in Computing Systems (JETC), ACM Transactions on Cyber-Physical Systems (TCPS), ACM Transactions on Embedded Computing Systems (TECS), ACM Transactions on Parallel Computing (TOPC), ACM Transactions on Quantum Computing (TQC), and ACM Transactions on Reconfigurable Technology and Systems (TRETS).

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Ethics and Plagiarism Challenges

The ACM Ethics and Plagiarism (E&P) Committee is a Committee of the ACM Publications Board, which is responsible for investigating claims of publications related ethics and policy violations.

In 2022, ACM received 59 official allegations of wrongdoing via ACM's confidential online violations reporting system. Over the past five years, the three most common types of allegations investigated by ACM were:

  • Peer Review-Related Misconduct (24)
  • Coercion, Abuse, Harassment, & Retaliation (20)
  • Falsification of Research (20)

During this same five-year period, the vast majority of cases involved ACM Conference Proceedings and International Conference Proceedings Series (ICPS) conferences (80%) compared to cases related to ACM Journals (20%).

Over the past year, ACM has received numerous claims related to undeclared Conflicts of Interest in connection with ACM conferences and journals, as well as allegations of authors adding references to their papers after peer review and acceptance (12); violations in the peer review process (18); coercion (6); and author misrepresentation (4). Some of the claims we have received contain more than one violation.

Two of the major challenges ACM faces are: (1) the rise in the number of fraudulent publications submitted to ACM journals, ACM conferences, and ICPS conferences, such as Paper Mills, that seek to take advantage of ACM publication venues and the ACM Digital Library; and (2) the increased use of AI assisted authoring tools such as ChatGPT to generate entire papers, which have the potential to undermine the integrity of ACM Publications. ACM is actively working to address these challenges with the utilization and development of tools to identify fraudulent publications and by updating policies to offer clear guidance on the use of new technologies in the ACM authoring process and educating the community about acceptable publication practices.

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Call for ICPS Managing Editor

ACM's International Conference Proceedings Series (ICPS) publishes high-quality international conferences, technical symposia, and workshops in computer science and related areas of research. We are currently seeking a PhD-level Managing Editor with research experience in computer science to oversee the program. This is a paid position. Interested candidates may apply here, or contact Sean Pidgeon, Executive Editor, at [email protected] for further information.

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ACM Publications Welcome New Editors-in-Chief

ACM Transactions on Programming Languages and Systems (TOPLAS) named Jan Vitek as Editor-in-Chief for a three-year term starting September 1, 2022, and ending August 31, 2025. Vitek is a Professor of Computer Science at Northeastern University. He holds degrees from the University of Geneva and the University of Victoria and works on topics related to the design and implementation of programming languages.

Proceedings of the ACM on Programming Language (PACMPL) named Michael Hicks as Editor-in-Chief for a three-year term starting November 15, 2022 and ending November 14, 2025. Hicks is a Senior Principal Scientist at Amazon Web Services and is Professor Emeritus at the University of Maryland.

ACM Transactions on Storage (TOS) named Erez Zadok as Editor-in-Chief for a three-year term starting November 15, 2022 and ending November 14, 2025. Zadok is a Professor at the Computer Science Department in the College of Engineering and Applied Sciences at Stony Brook University and directs the Filesystems and Storage Lab in the CS department.

ACM Transactions on Interactive Intelligent Systems (TIIS) welcomed Shlomo Berkovsky as its Editor-in-Chief for a term starting November 15, 2022 and ending November 14, 2025. Berkovsky is a Professor at Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia.

Interaction named Elizabeth Churchill and Mikael Wiberg as new Co-Editors-in-Chief for the term of January 2023-January 2026. Churchill, who served as Vice President of ACM from July 2018-June 2020, is Director of User Experience at Google in Mountain View, CA. Wiberg, who served as one of the magazine's three co-editors from 2019-2022, is a professor in the Department of Informatics at Umeå University, Sweden.

ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction (TOCHI) welcomed new Co-EIC Kasper Hornbaeck, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark, for a term starting January 20, 2023, and ending October 31, 2024. He is joining the current EIC, Kristina Höök. Up to now, the journal had only had a single EIC.

ACM Transactions on Computation Theory (TOCT) welcomes Prahladh Harsha as its new Editor-in-Chief. The appointment is for an approximately one-year term starting March 15, 2023 and ending April 30, 2024. Harsha is a faculty member of the at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research.

ACM Transactions on Computing for Healthcare (HEALTH) welcomes Gang Zhou as its new Co-EIC, joining Insup Lee and John Anthony Stankovic. The appointment is for an approximately one-year term starting March 15, 2023 and ending April 30, 2024. Zhou is a Professor at the College of William and Mary.

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ACM Publications Welcome New Editors-in-Chief

ACM Transactions on Programming Languages and Systems (TOPLAS) named Jan Vitek as Editor-in-Chief for a three-year term starting September 1, 2022, and ending August 31, 2025. Vitek is a Professor of Computer Science at Northeastern University. He holds degrees from the University of Geneva and the University of Victoria and works on topics related to the design and implementation of programming languages.

Proceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages (PACMPL) named Michael Hicks as Editor-in-Chief for a three-year term starting November 15, 2022 and ending November 14, 2025. Hicks is a Senior Principal Scientist at Amazon Web Services and is Professor Emeritus at the University of Maryland.

ACM Transactions on Storage (TOS) named Erez Zadok as Editor-in-Chief for a three-year term starting November 15, 2022 and ending November 14, 2025. Zadok is a Professor at the Computer Science Department in the College of Engineering and Applied Sciences at Stony Brook University and directs the Filesystems and Storage Lab in the CS department.

ACM Transactions on Interactive Intelligent Systems (TIIS) welcomed Shlomo Berkovsky as its Editor-in-Chief for a term starting November 15, 2022 and ending November 14, 2025. Berkovsky is a Professor at Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia.

Interactions named Elizabeth Churchill and Mikael Wiberg as new Co-Editors-in-Chief for the term of January 2023-January 2026. Churchill, who served as Vice President of ACM from July 2018-June 2020, is Director of User Experience at Google in Mountain View, CA. Wiberg, who served as one of the magazine's three co-editors from 2019-2022, is a professor in the Department of Informatics at Umeå University, Sweden.

ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction (TOCHI) welcomed new Co-EIC Kasper Hornbaeck, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark, for a term starting January 20, 2023, and ending October 31, 2024. He is joining the current EIC, Kristina Höök. Up to now, the journal had only had a single EIC.

ACM Transactions on Computation Theory (TOCT) welcomes Prahladh Harsha as its new Editor-in-Chief. The appointment is for an approximately one-year term starting March 15, 2023 and ending April 30, 2024. Harsha is a faculty member of the at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research.

ACM Transactions on Computing for Healthcare (HEALTH) welcomes Gang Zhou as its new Co-EIC, joining Insup Lee and John Anthony Stankovic. The appointment is for an approximately one-year term starting March 15, 2023 and ending April 30, 2024. Zhou is a Professor at the College of William and Mary.

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New ACM Journals Open for Submissions

Proceedings of the ACM on Networking (PACMNET) is a journal for research relevant to multiple aspects of the area of computer networking. The journal seeks papers presenting significant and novel research results on emerging computer networks and its applications, especially submissions that present new technologies, novel experimentation, creative use of networking technologies, and new insights made possible using analysis. PACMNET is also looking for papers on network properties such as policy and economics, security and privacy, reliability and availability, performance, energy efficiency, etc.

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.

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.

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 under-represented and marginalized communities. JCSS aims to explicitly promote interdisciplinary research work including new methodologies, systems, techniques, applications, behavioral, qualitative, and quantitative studies that address key societal challenges including sustainability, gender equality, health, education, poverty, accessibility, conservation, climate change, energy, infrastructure, and economic growth, among others. We also welcome research on the ethics of technology, especially from a critical perspective, that explores limitations and concerns with technology-led solutions for sustainable societies. The journal will be published quarterly.

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ACM Journals Inaugural Issues

ACM Transactions on Recommender Systems (TORS) publishes 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 takes a holistic view on the field and calls 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 are welcome as well. Such works may either be based on insights from related fields, e.g., marketing or psychology, or apply recommendation technology in novel application areas.

ACM 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.

ACM Distributed Ledger Technologies: Research and Practice is a peer-reviewed journal that publishes high quality, interdisciplinary research on the research and development, real-world deployment, and/or evaluation of distributed ledger technologies (DLT) such as blockchain, cryptocurrency, and smart contracts. DLT offers a blend of original research work and innovative practice-driven advancements by internationally distinguished DLT experts and researchers from academia, and public and private sector organizations.

The inaugural issue of Collective Intelligence (COLA) is now available for download. Co-published by SAGE, COLA is a global, peer-reviewed, open-access journal that publishes trans-disciplinary work bearing on collective intelligence across the disciplines. The journal embraces a policy of creative rigor in the study of collective intelligence to facilitate the discovery of principles that apply across scales and new ways of harnessing the collective to improve social, ecological, and economic outcomes. In that spirit, the journal encourages a broad-minded approach to collective performance. We welcome perspectives that emphasize traditional views of intelligence as well as optimality, satisficing, robustness, adaptability, and wisdom.

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New Titles From ACM Books

The Handbook on Socially Interactive Agents Vol. 2 by Birgit Lugrin, Catherine Pelachaud, and David Traum provides a comprehensive overview of the research fields of Embodied Conversational Agents, Intelligent Virtual Agents, and Social Robotics. Written by international experts in their respective fields, the book summarizes research in the many important research communities pertinent for SIAs, while discussing current challenges and future directions. The handbook provides easy access to modeling and studying SIAs for researchers and students and aims at further bridging the gap between the research communities involved.

On Monotonicity Testing and the 2-to-2 Games Conjecture by Dor Minzer discusses the monotonicity testing problem from the field of property testing, first considered by Goldreich et al. in 2000. Two results are drawn from this subject. The first result of this book is an essentially optimal algorithm for this problem. The analysis of the algorithm heavily relies on a novel, directed, and robust analogue of a Boolean isoperimetric inequality of Talagrand from 1993. The second result of this book is a proof of the 2-to-2 games conjecture (with imperfect completeness), which implies new hardness of approximation results for problems such as vertex cover and independent set. Both are thoroughly explored here.

Prophets of Computing: Visions of Society Transformed by Computing, edited by Dick van Lente, looks back to when electronic digital computers first appeared after World War II as a revolutionary force. Business management, the world of work, administrative life, the nation state, and soon enough everyday life were expected to change dramatically with these machines' use. This volume explores how these expectations differed, assesses unexpected commonalities, and suggests ways to understand the divergences and convergences. It also examines thirteen countries—based on source material in ten different languages—the effort of an international team of scholars, and includes a wide range of pictorial representations of "the future with computers."

Effective Theories in Programming Practice by Jayadev Misra explores set theory, logic, discrete mathematics, and fundamental algorithms (along with their correctness and complexity analysis). These will always remain useful for computing professionals and need to be understood by students who want to succeed. This textbook explains a number of those fundamental algorithms to programming students in a concise, yet precise, manner. The book includes the background material needed to understand the explanations and to develop such explanations for other algorithms. The book is self-contained, assuming only a background in high school mathematics and elementary program writing skills. It does not assume familiarity with any specific programming language.

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