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ACM's Commitment to Open Access |
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In June 2020, the ACM Council voted to sustainably transition ACM to a fully Open Access (OA) model within five years. The challenge was to ensure that the transition to OA is done in a financially responsible and sustainable way. ACM's Plan relies heavily on the ACM Open model. The ACM Open Model The ACM Open model seeks to transition ACM from its reliance on "read-only" subscriptions or licenses sold exclusively to libraries and library consortia underwritten primarily by library budgets to selling "Open Access Read + Publish" licenses to universities, corporations, and government institutions underwritten by a combination of library budgets, open access funds, university administration budgets, and departmental budgets. When a corresponding author, of which there can only be one per article, is affiliated with an institution that has signed on to the ACM Open model, that article is published on an Open Access basis in the ACM Digital Library without any "author fees" such as an Article Processing Charge (APC) needing to be paid by the corresponding author. The annual fee the institution is asked to pay depends on the number of articles affiliated with that institution. Benefits Articles published in the ACM DL on an open access basis are downloaded two to three times more than those published behind the DL paywall. The average number of citations for an ACM Open Access article is 25 compared to 15 average citations for articles published behind the paywall—a differential we expect to increase. ACM is the only major computer science publisher in the world to commit to transitioning to a completely Open Access model for all of its publications by a specific date. Both Springer and IEEE have been opportunistic about transitioning their publications, but neither has fully committed. Once ACM completes this transition, all ACM authors will see the benefits. Current Progress During the June 2023 Council meeting it was reported that approximately 28% of research articles published by ACM and approximately 30% of ACM's Digital Library income of approximately $20 million US have already transitioned to ACM Open—with projections that these figures would reach 35-40% by the end of 2023, 50-55% by the end of 2024, and 60-70% by the end of 2025—when ACM is planning to flip to a mandatory Open Access model for all ACM Publications. The goal for ACM is, of course, to publish 100% of ACM's roughly 26,000 research articles annually on a fully OA basis without the need to require any ACM authors to pay APCs. But realistically, this is a very long-term goal that ACM currently believes will take longer than the end of 2025 to achieve. ACM's Commitment At the Council meeting, ACM's President and the entire Council reiterated their commitment to the December 31, 2025, timeline. Unless something dramatically changes over the next two years, such as progress halting with ACM Open, Open Access government and funder mandates dissipating around the world (especially in the United States, Europe, or the UK), or APCs are simply deemed untenable for computer scientists and authors not affiliated with ACM Open institutions, ACM will become a fully Open Access Publisher on December 31, 2025.
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