Open Call for Volunteers for Presidential Task Forces

“ACM President Yannis Ioannidis is planning to create 10 task forces as part of ACM 4.0, a long-term strategic plan for ACM, and is inviting volunteers to serve on these task forces

Below are brief descriptions of each of the task forces. Each will comprise a cross-section of individuals selected for their interest and relevant expertise. Although the length of service for the different task forces may vary, it is anticipated that each will produce an initial report in about six months….

The Open Science task force will establish services to help researchers operate according to the Open Science paradigm (which includes Open Access as an important component) and the demands it brings, for example, reproducibility of experiments, transparency throughout the research life cycle, and new forms of scholarly communication and reviewing….”

The American Society for Microbiology Adopts CCC RightsLink for Scientific Communications to Manage its Growing Open Access Program | SSP Society for Scholarly Publishing

“CCC, a leading provider of Open Access (OA) workflow solutions, announces the American Society for Microbiology (ASM), has adopted RightsLink for Scientific Communications (RLSC) to manage its growing OA program…. 

RLSC makes it easy for scholarly publishers of all sizes to automate and scale OA institutional agreements and collect publication charges. It is the most widely-adopted, community-led market solution that simplifies OA agreement administration for publishers, funders, institutions, and authors. With more than 1,500 institutions and funders using the cross-publisher platform to manage funding requests, RLSC supports a comprehensive range of transformative deals, pure OA agreements, membership discounts, and other financial arrangements between publishers and institutions, providing real-time transaction data for all stakeholders….”

Why Open Access To The ACM Digital Library Matters | Associations Now

“ACM, in the midst of both a landmark celebration and a broader open-access initiative, is putting its history online for anyone to access. The archives give computing enthusiasts something to celebrate—and interested parties a window into ACM’s evolution….

Once, this information—immensely valuable to historians and researchers alike—might have been locked behind a paywall. But as a part of its landmark campaign for its 75th anniversary celebrations, ACM is opening up a large portion of its archives, making the first 50 years of its published records—more than 117,500 documents dating from 1951 to 2000—accessible to the public without a login….”

UW Joins ACM Transformative Open Access Agreement

Starting January 2022 the University of Washington (UW) entered into a transformative open access agreement with ACM, the Association for Computing Machinery. UW joins over a hundred other institutions participating in the ACM Open agreement. Under this agreement research articles by UW corresponding authors in all ACM journals, conference proceedings, and magazines will be made open access immediately at no cost to the author.

In 2020, UW ranked third in the world for institutions publishing research in ACM Digital Library publications. This agreement will allow all of those articles going forward to be made available open access supporting not just UW authors but researchers around the world.

 

Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) Open Access Agreement | Scholarly Publishing – MIT Libraries

“The MIT Libraries has negotiated an innovative open access agreement with the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) that allows MIT authors to make ACM articles freely available at no cost to them.

Under the agreement, MIT corresponding authors can make all articles and conference proceedings in the ACM Digital Library open access immediately at no cost to the author. Instead, MIT is paying ACM a single bulk fee to cover both article publication costs and subscription access. Authors who elect open access may select a Creative Commons license for article sharing and reuse.

The pilot agreement runs from January 2020 through December 31, 2022, and applies to manuscripts submitted and articles published during that period….”

ACM Joins Initiative for Open Abstracts

“ACM, the Association for Computing Machinery, has joined the Initiative for Open Abstracts (I4OA), a collaboration between publishers, infrastructure organizations, librarians, and researchers to promote the open availability of abstracts.

By joining I4OA, ACM commits to making abstracts of articles published by ACM available in an open and machine-readable way. Abstracts will be submitted to Crossref, initially for journal articles published by ACM and in a next stage also for conference papers. Bringing abstracts together in a common format in a global cross-disciplinary database offers important opportunities for text mining, natural language processing, and artificial intelligence….”

Publishers roll out alternative routes to open access | Science | AAAS

“Now, two nonprofit publishers of prominent journals have debuted new ways to support OA journals without shifting the burden entirely to authors. “Everybody that we work with is watching these two [new models] closely,” says Michael Clarke, managing partner of the consulting firm Clarke & Esposito, which advises publishers. “There is not currently a good solution.”

One approach, called Subscribe to Open and implemented today by Annual Reviews, would transform the nature of subscriptions. To make a journal freely available, institutions would be asked for a contribution equivalent to their previous subscription—minus a 5% discount that Annual Reviews is offering to retain a critical mass of paying institutions. To deter freeloading, Annual Reviews says it will reimpose paywalls and rescind the discount if not enough subscribers renew each year. It is planning to pilot the approach in up to five of its 51 titles, many of which are widely cited….

The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) launched a different approach earlier this year. ACM is asking the institutions that publish the most papers in its 59 journals to pay more than they do now for subscriptions—in some cases about 10 times as much, or $100,000 per year. The higher fees will allow all researchers at participating universities to publish an unlimited number of papers in ACM journals without paying APCs. The average cost per paper will beat the average market rate for APCs, the society says. ACM is betting the approach will sustain its journal revenue while it transitions to making all the 21,000 peer-reviewed papers it publishes annually free to everyone.

So far, both approaches are getting a positive response….”

ACM’s New Open Access Agreements: A Q&A with Scott Delman – The Scholarly Kitchen

“As many Scholarly Kitchen readers will know, in late January it was announced that the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) had signed new open access (OA) publishing agreements with four major US universities. There has been lots of public conversation about these agreements, but I decided to go to the source for some additional information. Scott Delman of ACM graciously agreed to respond to some questions….”

Keith Webster: Libraries will champion an open future for scholarship | Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

“All of us who work in academic libraries here in Pittsburgh and around the world aspire to improve the quality of science and scholarship. It’s increasingly clear that this can best be done through the open exchange of ideas and data, which can accelerate the pace and reach of scientific discovery.

The desire of researchers and their funders to make their research freely available to all is evident. As a result, the acceptance of open access publishing and article sharing services has soared in recent years. Meanwhile, the rapidly escalating journal costs experienced by libraries over the past 25 years are agreed to be unsustainable. It is against this backdrop that Carnegie Mellon University is establishing open access agreements with top journal publishers, with a special focus on the the fields of science and computing.

Most recently, CMU joined three fellow premier research institutions in reaching new open access agreements with the Association for Computing Machinery, the university’s largest publisher. CMU collaborated with the University of California, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Iowa State University in developing a new publishing model that is expected to influence ACM’s future open access agreements….”

Next Generation ArXiv and the Economics of Open Access Publishing

“Launched in 1991, arXiv has become an indispensable platform providing free and open access to research for the machine learning community and beyond. Now, arXiv has announced plans to alpha test its next-generation “arXiv-NG” submission system in the first quarter of 2020. The system is a significant part of the growing arXiv-NG initiative that aims to improve core service infrastructure through an incremental and modular renewal of the existing arXiv system.

The arXiv team has already taken the initial steps to improve the overall accessibility of the repository’s user interfaces, both through behind-the-scenes structural improvements and user-facing changes — adding for example support for mobile-friendly abstract pages….”

ACM Signs New Open Access Agreements with Four Leading Universities | MIT Libraries News

“ACM, the Association for Computing Machinery, entered into transformative open access agreements with several of its largest institutional customers, including the University of California (UC), Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and Iowa State University (ISU). The agreements, which run for three-year terms beginning January 1, 2020, cover both access to and open access publication in ACM’s journals, proceedings and magazines for these universities, and represent the first transformative open access agreements for ACM….”

After talks with Elsevier stalled, the University of California has been working to advance open access. Here’s how. | UC Berkeley Library News

“UC is in negotiations with Wiley and Springer Nature to renew contracts that expired on Dec. 31. In each case, UC and the publisher have a shared desire to reach a transformative agreement that combines UC’s subscription with open access publishing of UC research. Both publishers have extended UC’s access to their journals, under the terms of their previous contracts, while negotiations are underway….”

ACM, SIGCHI, and the Economics of Open Access Publishing | ACM SIGCHI

“TLDR;

Publishing has material costs, and understanding the economics of non-profit publishing is important for meaningful discussions about open access
Scholarly societies are non-profit organisations that sustain important community activities by reinvesting revenue from various sources, including publishing
If we want universal gold open access, we need to explore other economic models or reduce community activities….”

ACM, SIGCHI, and the Economics of Open Access Publishing | ACM SIGCHI

“TLDR;

Publishing has material costs, and understanding the economics of non-profit publishing is important for meaningful discussions about open access
Scholarly societies are non-profit organisations that sustain important community activities by reinvesting revenue from various sources, including publishing
If we want universal gold open access, we need to explore other economic models or reduce community activities….”