There are many different terms and definitions for Open Access used by Publishers, Institutions, and Research Funders. ACM considers all eligible article types published by ACM that include all of the following to be Open Access:

Freely available for anyone, anywhere, to read online and download from the ACM Digital Library
Copyright retention of the published article by the author(s)
The option for the author(s) to assign a Creative Common license for sharing and reuse of the published article

A full list of article types eligible and ineligible for Open Access publishing can be found here.

Who is eligible for the Open Access publishing option?

All corresponding authors from an institution participating in ACM Open will have their research articles published Open Access in ACM journals, conference proceedings, and magazines, in perpetuity at the time of publication at no cost to the authors.

When you publish your article Open Access, it becomes immediately accessible to the world to read for free. As a result, your research will be more widely disseminated and will have greater impact. ACM compared thousands of articles published Open Access in the ACM DL against thousands of articles published behind the Digital Library paywall, and on average the OA articles receive 2-3X the number of full-text article downloads and 70% more citations. In addition, authors of OA published articles are immediately compliant with the vast majority of Public and Private Research Funder Open Access Mandates.

Is publishing my article with ACM on an Open Access basis mandatory?

There are currently 10 Gold Open Access journals published by ACM that are 100% Open Access, but these titles do not currently require ACM Open, an author-paid APC, or an economic waiver for authors to publish in them. ACM is considering when these journals will require one of these Open Access funding options to publish and at this point that date will either be January 1, 2025 or January 1, 2026, but until that time ACM Open and APCs will be optional. No other ACM Publications are currently mandatory OA, except for the International Conference Proceedings Series (ICPS).

ACM has transitioned the International Conference Proceedings Series (ICPS) to 100% mandatory Open Access, as of January 1, 2024. All ICPS conferences, except those which already issued Calls for Papers prior to January 1, 2024 and have received an "exception" for 2024 OA Publication, will be required to publish their Proceedings on an Open Access basis with ACM. This "exception" was created since some ICPS conferences already started issuing their Calls for Papers prior to ACM announcing its plans to transition ICPS to mandatory OA in 2024, and it was decided that it would be unfair to require authors to participate in the program after they had already submitted their papers to some of these ICPS conferences.

For all ICPS conferences that have not received an "exception" for 2024, ACM Open, author-paid APCs, or a waiver will be the only way to publish with ACM after 1/1/2024.
All other ICPS conferences, including those granted an "exception" and those that published with ACM in 2023 but are holding their next conference in 2025, will be required to transition to 100% Open Access as from 1/1/2025.
All other ACM Publications, including ACM Sponsored Conferences, ACM Journals, and ACM Magazines will transition to 100% Open Access as from 12/31/2025.

ACM has already made the decision to transition all ACM Conferences to mandatory Open Access on 12/31/2025 and ACM has already started communicating that decision to all of the ACM Special Interest Groups and related ACM Conferences, and will continue to communicate the changes over the next few years leading up to the transition at the end of 2025, so all ACM Conferences will be required to include information about these new requirements in all Calls for Papers for 2026 ACM conferences.

Once fully executed, may the ACM OPEN license agreement, including financial information, be published?

Yes, however we ask for the actual signatures in the license to be redacted for purposes of identity protection.

How can I learn more about the ACM OPEN model?

Please contact [email protected] for more information.

Payment and Pricing Questions

How is my institution’s ACM OPEN Tier classification determined for pricing?

Your institution’s ACM OPEN Tier is determined by the average number of its affiliated corresponding authored peer-reviewed research articles published over the last 3 full year period. Current ACM OPEN-participating institutions will have their ACM OPEN Tier for the next license period determined by using the annual average from the final 3 years of their current ACM OPEN license period.

Newly participating institutions will have their tier fixed on April 1 of each year based on the publication data from the last 3 full calendar years. For example, as of April 1, 2023, all new ACM OPEN-participating institutions will be tiered according to their average publication output from the January 1, 2020 to December 31, 2022 period. This means the pricing is fixed for the license's duration.

If an institution sees a decline in publishing, upon renewal, the institution would renew at a lower tier. Conversely, if an institution sees an increase in their research output, they would move up to a higher tier at their time of renewal. We do not raise or lower the tiers and the corresponding fees while an ACM OPEN license is active. Institutions can rely on ACM's predictability in pricing for the duration of their ACM OPEN license agreement.

Will ACM reimburse APC expenses for articles published after an ACM Open license has been signed?

It depends. ACM will refund APCs paid for Articles published on an Open Access basis as a result of author-paid APCs after the signing date of the Agreement if the payment of APCs was a result of Publisher error (i.e. the ACM Open Rights system did not properly identify the affiliation of the corresponding author as an ACM Open institution) and not as a result of incorrect domain names being provided by the author or the institution. ACM will not refund APCs paid for Articles published on an Open Access basis as a result of author-paid APCs after the Effective Date but prior to the Signing Date.

Publication Reporting Questions

Who can access the ACM Open Dashboard and what data does it provide?

ACM has developed a custom dashboard that reports on Open Access publishing activity for institutions and consortia. Each institution can designate representatives to have access to their individual institution’s dashboard. Each consortium can designate representatives to have access to data for all of the ACM Open participating individual institutions in their consortium. The dashboard includes author name, corresponding author name, author email addresses, publication title, article title, DOI, chosen eRights form type, and funder information.

Why might my institution’s reported publication data change over time if it is for the same reported period of time?

As the scholarly publishing industry transitions to sustainable models for Open Access publication, having accurate and reliable publication data has become more important than ever before for societies and publishers to ensure that articles eligible for Open Access publication are identified, routed through the appropriate publication workflows, and accurately reported on to those paying for Open Access publication (i.e. - institutions, authors, funders, other sources, etc.).

In the ACM OPEN model, an article’s eligibility to participate in the program is dependent on the institutional affiliation of the corresponding author, so it is critical to accurately identify both the corresponding author and their institutional affiliation. Historically, since author names can be ambiguous and authors do not always list their affiliations the same way in their articles over time, list multiple affiliations related to a single published Work, or use Gmail or other generic domain names for their contact information, accurate author and institutional name normalization has been a long-standing issue in the publishing community and is a challenge nearly all publishers are working on both separately and together. Several related industry efforts to solve this problem are ORCID and ROR and ACM is participating in both of these efforts.

In addition to these industry efforts which will take time to fully implement and realize the benefits of, ACM has recently started to implement a new automated affiliation hierarchy system and incorporate manual checks into its production workflows and reporting systems for ACM published articles and ACM OPEN publication data as part of an overall effort to provide more accurate reporting. Nevertheless, ensuring the complete accuracy of publication data underpinning the tiering and pricing for the ACM OPEN program should be treated as a goal that will take years to achieve.

For this reason, it is possible that over time our new automated systems and manual checks will identify articles that were previously excluded from the reported data or that articles reported as belonging to an ACM OPEN institution may either not be appropriate for inclusion in ACM OPEN or else misattributed to that institution. As a result, the article data previously sent to an institution may change over time as these affiliation processes improve. Based on a detailed review of the data and new Quality Assurance procedures being implemented for ACM OPEN and the ACM Digital Library, ACM is confident that the data is overwhelmingly accurate (over 90%) and that our focus is on the edge cases to ensure that the community can trust the data that appears both in the ACM Digital Library and provided to our ACM OPEN customers. The success of the ACM OPEN model will depend on a variety of factors, including the accuracy of our data, and so we believe that our ACM OPEN institutional partners have a strong role to play with these efforts by periodically checking the article data it receives from ACM and notifying us if anything appears incorrect or potentially missing. Where errors or omissions are identified, ACM will make the appropriate changes to ensure the integrity of ACM OPEN and the relationship between ACM and our institutional and consortial partners. The complete and accurate affiliation of research articles is a long-term goal for the publishing industry as a whole, and ACM appreciates the partnership of the academic community in this effort.

Publishing Workflow Questions

Can I continue to publish in the ACM journal, magazine, or proceeding of my choice once the new agreement is in effect?

Your ability to choose where to publish your research will not be affected. Authors may continue to publish in and support any ACM publication of their choice.

Do you have any information for authors on the author workflow after their institution joins ACM Open?

When an institution joins ACM Open, the institution is provided information about the requirements for authors participating in ACM Open. Among these requirements is that authors must use an email address with the institution’s domain, provided to ACM by the institution, so that ACM’s systems can identify accepted articles as being affiliated with an ACM Open institution. Once accepted articles are identified, they are sent to ACM’s eRights system and the corresponding author will be provided with a series of options to select the rights that will govern their published paper. The default choice for the corresponding author is to grant ACM the non-exclusive permission to publish and to use a CC-BY license; however, the author may also choose to grant ACM an exclusive license to publish. If granting ACM the non-exclusive permission to publish, the author may also choose other CC licenses.

No APC will be required for any ACM Open-eligible paper. Please refer to this document for more information on the ACM Open Author eRights experience, including screenshots of the ACM eRights form.

Is there a publishing dashboard for institutional administrators to approve and decline articles?

No. Some publishers’ Open Access models include a process for pre-approving or declining articles, because most publishers’ OA models are based on APC charges. When each article is charged for individually, institutions are given the option of deciding which articles to pre-approve. The ACM Open model does not include the ability to pre-approve articles because ACM Open does not require individual authors or institutions to pay at the per-article level. The ACM Open model is based on article type and only APC-eligible articles are used to determine an institution’s tiering and pricing. In addition, ACM is moving to full Open Access in 2026 and publishes over 27,000 APC-eligible articles per year, including over 23,000 conference articles that publish with very tight production schedules. Adding a pre-approvals process for ACM Open would negatively impact the overall production and publication process for tens of thousands of ACM published articles, so a decision was made in 2020 to not include a pre-approvals process for ACM Open.

Will corresponding authors not affiliated with an ACM Open institution and who are unwilling to pay an APC be able to present their accepted article at an ACM conference?

No. After ACM conferences transition to 100% mandatory Open Access in 2026, the only way to present accepted articles at an ACM conference will be to publish the article in the conference proceedings for those conferences, and publishing in the conference proceedings will require ACM Open, an author-paid APC, or a waiver. Once the corresponding authors' article is accepted, they will be provided a link to enter and complete the rights process. The system will automatically identify the corresponding author's affiliation with an ACM Open institution or eligibility for an economic waiver based on the email domain used or other identifying information. If the corresponding author is unaffiliated with an ACM Open institution and is not eligible for a waiver, they will be required to pay the appropriate APC for the accepted article. Without completion of this payment, the accepted article will be removed from the Proceedings prior to publication and the author will be unable to present the article at the conference.

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