CACM Revamp Project
As per Stu and Janie’s recent recap of discussions for revitalizing CACM, the
next step noted was to pull together the potential components for a viable mockup and to examine what it would take (in terms of prep, volunteer involvement,
budget, staffing, scheduling) to fulfill this vision.
There are, in fact, visions of the new CACM. Here, we include the editorial
components that (hopefully) pull all those ideas together into a publication of
great interest and professional value to the ACM constituency.
In order of appearance:
News Section
NewsTrack will be replaced by a dynamic and far more comprehensive news
section featuring a combination of news briefs of a paragraph or two and some
that are half- to a full-page long. (Science and IEEE Spectrum are great models).
This material will be produced by professional writers, although volunteers and
contributors will be encouraged to forward news from their domains, universities,
and parts of the world for staff to write-up. This news section must cover the
globe. The coverage will include technology/research news; science news; public
policy updates; global policy/trade/markets.
Note about Science: We had a conversation with Science’s News Editor, Colin
Norman. Science has a substantial staff dedicated to generating news in the US,
Europe, Asia. They also rely more on freelancers than they have in the past,
today about 40% of their news pages are written by freelance writers. Norman
cautioned us against a dependency on freelancers.
There has been discussion about having a trio of news features covering policy
and legislative news from designated correspondents in the U.S., Europe, and
Asia. Other news to be considered in this section is government funding news
and initiatives worldwide.
Total number of pages for news: 5-7pages
COLUMNS
The front section of the magazine typically includes columns and departments of
technical interest. There are many options and opportunities to explore new
topics and new voices. Moreover, some of the current CACM quarterly columns
are read regularly by 70% or more of the ACM audience, according to readership
surveys over the last five years. For that reason we may want to consider
retaining the most popular existing columns. Those would be:
Commentary (or a Point/Counterpoint treatment). A soundly reasoned argument
always grabs reader attention. The topic must be timely; the debate one that
draws all sectors of the CS community.
Practical Programmer—Robert Glass (or a new author)
This column is currently read by 75% of the CACM audience. Glass likes to put a
mirror up to academics and practitioners; often depicting all the ways their
worlds—and work—are as similar as they are dissimilar.
The Business of Software—Philip Armour
This column is often viewed as an abbreviated case study in software
engineering and development projects.
IT as a Profession—P.J. Denning
Denning addresses ways to think about the computing field—or segments of it—
as well as practices that make the IT professional more effective.
Legally Speaking—Pam Samuelson
CACM was the first computing publication to feature a column devoted to
intellectual property rights and other legal ramifications spurred by technology.
The goal of this column is to translate the legalese for the computer science
community (and vice versa).
It is unlikely these existing contributors will agree to anything more frequent than
a quarterly column. One of these columns per issue could be slated. (These
authors are each paid an honorarium of $500 per column).
Peter Neumann’s monthly “Inside Risks” column has been a staple feature for
the last page of CACM since July 1990. Another highly rated CACM feature.
This might be interchanged with a book review every quarter.
Column Ideas to consider:
Reviving Programming Pearls—Programming is about the only common thread
the ACM audience has in common. Although it ceased publication in 1987, it is
still recognized as one of CACM’s greatest columns.
Another potential turn-to feature might be a monthly brainteaser
(programming/math/algorithmic) or think piece that gets readers actively involved
in finding the solution. The CACM audience loves a challenge.
Total page count for columns material = 10-13 pages
Computing Practices (or Best of Best Practices) Section
Given ACM membership is 80% practitioner-based, and that more than half the
readership find the current content to be professionally worthwhile—particularly
in the management ranks—it would appear a sound argument not to eliminate all
such material from the next generation of CACM. These are real-world, problemsolving or best practices pieces that are typically no more than 5-7 (magazine)
pages. Two or three of these articles per issue (depending on space) would offer
a more well-rounded editorial fare.
CACM has a healthy queue of accepted manuscripts. Any future submissions of
technical articles or practical computing matters would only be considered if they
covered new territory, new apps, new technologies.
Much of the current backlog (the result of three years of an unprecedented
number of submissions) will be published in CACM Virtual Extensions. These are
online-only publications have been employed when needed as a way to speed up
the publication schedule for authors. Since the online articles are treated as
extensions of a particular print edition, authors can still cite volume, number, and
even page numbers. CACM has published approximately 100 articles in virtual
extensions since 1996.
Total pages for technical articles section = 20-25 pages
Best of the Best (or)
Research and Discovery Section
As discussed, drawing top research articles back into the fold may best be
served initially by tapping ACM conferences and ACM journals for some of the
best papers from their most recent meets and/or issues. HQ will send requests to
key ACM conference program chairs (“key” to be determined by a CACM
editorial board) and eics asking they pick the top 2-3 papers from their meet or
recent issues.
Research chosen for publication will be preceded by a well-written, well-rounded
one-page summary (a la Science magazine’s “Perspectives”). This summary will
speak to the audience, most of who may not be expert in the particular research
discipline to follow but would surely be interested in how the work affects their
work.
Program chairs and eics will be given specific criteria for paper selection.
Among the key measures they should consider:

Selection should tap best papers for a general audience; that is, research
best suited to or most likely appreciated by a diverse audience rather than
a specific discipline.

Content should strive to focus on new advancements, new findings.

Also to consider in this mix are “Big Idea” papers as noted in one of Dave
Patterson’s first President’s Letters (“The Health of Research Conferences
and the Dearth of Big Idea Papers,” CACM, Dec. 2004, 23-24). These are
the research pieces typically submitted to major conferences that do not fit
any particular technical track. They tend to be bolder in nature, focusing
on new directions or new ways to think about a research project. Just
papers might be extremely valuable to the CACM audience and/or could
spark scientific debate. Program chairs must also be alerted (by HQ) to
the editorial interest in these manuscripts, even if they do not make the
conference cut.

Selections should be global in scope and interest.

Selections should be of a manageable length for magazine inclusion; that
is, very lengthy research papers (over 12-15 pages) do not translate to a
broad-based publication and cannot be accommodated by the monthly
page allotment. Note: Several ACM journals (inc. Computing Surveys)
regularly publish research papers in the 30-50+ page range. We may want
to consider an abbreviated version—or a “Perspectives” treatment only—
of this research with a url pointer to the complete version.
Conference program chairs and eics will be asked to nominate potential authors
to write the one-page “Perspectives” summaries. Authors and, of course, the
CACM Editorial Board will also be approached for recommendations.
The mock-up for market research should have at least one more example to give
the test market groups a feel for the editorial that will make up a good portion of
each monthly issue. Given the time frame, conferences to consider approaching
in the next coming months include:
 WWW (May 23-26)
 ISCA (June 17-21)
 DAC (July 24-28)
 SIGGRAPH (July 30-Aug.3)
 SC ’06 (Nov. 11-17)
New research submissions submitted directly to CACM will also be considered.
Author guidelines and house ads will be published online and in print issues
noting criteria for new submissions.
Ultimate selection of the research papers to be published in CACM will be the
responsibility of the Editorial Board (possibly in conjunction with outside
reviewers and experts from which they have solicited comments).
Note about Science: Science editors commission Perspectives, but unsolicited
contributions are considered on occasion. Deputy Editor Katrina Kelner told us it
typically takes about 4 weeks for Perspective piece to be finalized. There are
usually about 30+ Perspectives “in the hopper” at any one time.
Total pages for the research section = 35-40 ages.
Redesign
A redesign offers a clean slate, in this case a less cluttered look, less
complementary art, defined sections for help readers find what they are looking
for, stronger typefaces.
A full magazine redesign can take six or more weeks to create and run upwards
of $20-25K.
Total page count:
The sections here represent about 70-85 editorial pages. Add to the count the
monthly musts = mastheads, membership app, display ads, house ads, calendar
of events, and career opportunities and the typical issue will run between 96-112
pages.
Editorial Board
All references here to the CACM Editorial Board are in respect to a new Editorial
Board of volunteers who will play a far more hand-on role in the creation of each
issue than has been the case for quite some time. This board will be international
in scope and outreach. It will be responsible for setting the editorial direction of
CACM, for identifying the research and the potential authors to pursue, for
opening doors and encouraging editorial submissions for consideration.
Board members must represent the key CS disciplines and have far-reaching
connections in their field of expertise. Again, their perspective (and efforts) must
be global. Moshe Vardi has agreed to spearhead this effort; however, his
schedule is such that he cannot turn to this project until early September.
Next Steps
Should Council endorse moving forward on this project, the next steps would
include:
1. Build a real mock-up of a new CACM for market research (focus groups,
interviews) to test the concept.
- We will need a larger set of Perspective papers (best of research)
- We will need an example of the "practitioners" piece (best of best practices?)
- We will need good examples of the kind of "news" we want.
- We will need good descriptions of the kind of "columns" we want.
To do this step will likely require insight and guidance from the volunteer EIC for
new CACM.
2. With the new mock-up, we need to conduct serious market research (with
members and non members). Goal of this research is to test the concept and
see if we have a seriously more engaging publication.
3. Develop a business plan to assess cost.
4. Develop a launch/transition plan
5. Complete the Editorial Board
6. Begin to create the new CACM.
Estimated Costs*
Mockup and market research including focus groups and interviews: $100K.
Complete CACM redesign $20-25K
News section prep options:
 Hire dedicated senior news writer to produce the news section each
month $75K-$85K.

Contracting a news service to prepare the news as per our direction and
coverage needs $25K-$30K per year. If need be, supplement with a
similar service overseas to ensure comprehensive coverage. Freelancers
would be commissioned on an as-need basis: ($1,000 to $1,500 per
article).
Anticipated Savings:
By keeping CACM to a page budget between 96-112 per issue (instead of
current 128-136) per issue will we realize a savings of $300K+ that can be
reallocated to help finance the revitalization.
*Please note at this stage the costs we can most closely estimate pertain to
producing a mockup and conducting market research. The ultimate feedback
from those efforts will help us develop a business plan with as accurate a cost
model as possible.