Beginning January 2026, all ACM publications will be made open access

Original Article ↗ Hacker News Discussion ↗

Overall reaction and scope

  • Many commenters are pleased and say this might make them rejoin ACM; others note it feels “long overdue.”
  • Older material (1951–2000) was already free to read; this decision covers new publications from 2026 onward.
  • Unclear to several people whether 2000–2025 content will become fully open access or just remain free-to-read under old terms.

Open access vs. licensing

  • Important distinction: “freely available” ≠ true open access under Creative Commons.
  • ACM confirms only articles published after Jan 1, 2026 will get CC-BY or CC-BY-NC-ND; the ~800k-paper backfile will generally not be relicensed.
  • This limits legal mirroring and reuse of many foundational CS papers, which some find disappointing.

Economics, APCs, and equity

  • Open access funding shifts revenue from subscriptions to Article Processing Charges (APCs) of about $1450 (and much higher in some other venues).
  • Concerns:
    • Incentive shift from readers to authors risks favoring quantity over quality and encouraging “pay to publish.”
    • Affordability for authors in middle‑income countries (e.g., Brazil) and for independent researchers without institutional support.
    • APC waivers and bulk institutional deals help, but may still skew research toward wealthy institutions and countries.
  • Others argue market forces, impact factors, and author selectivity will still pressure journals to maintain quality.

Role and value of journals

  • Some say in CS, arXiv and personal websites already solve access; journals mainly provide prestige and “quality badge” for careers, tenure, and evaluation.
  • Debate over whether journals should remain arbiters of quality vs. moving to more open, post‑publication peer review and alternative curation (lab reading lists, preprint servers).
  • Widespread criticism that publishers add little beyond light typesetting, metadata, and DOI/archiving, while relying on unpaid reviewers and editors.

ACM Digital Library “Premium” and AI

  • Alongside open access, ACM is introducing a paid “Premium” tier: advanced search, rich metadata, bulk downloads, and AI- or podcast-style summaries.
  • AI summaries draw strong criticism:
    • Often less accurate than author-written abstracts and sometimes longer.
    • Reported violations of non-derivative licenses for some articles.
  • Some are fine with this “AI slop” being paywalled; others see it as a way to preserve profits despite open access.

Access frictions and broader ecosystem

  • Reports of aggressive IP blocking and Cloudflare-style protections that hinder access from some countries and privacy-focused browsers.
  • Repeated calls for IEEE and other societies to follow ACM.
  • Several propose alternatives: non-profit or government-run repositories (like arXiv / PubMed-style), Subscribe-to-Open models, or university-hosted outlets as more sustainable, less extractive paths.