dential campaigns turned on
proposals for improving publications, especially CACM. Unfortunately, there was not enough
money to pay for the additional
pages that would eliminate the
CACM backlog. And even if
there were, a typical issue would
be over half an inch thick! Eventually there was a consensus
favoring a major restructuring of
publications to allow for more
research publications, each self-supporting with its own subscriber base.
At the same time, an increasing number of SIGs wanted to
start Transactions in their disciplines. The most active promoters were programming languages,
computing systems, databases,
graphics, and office automation.
The SIGs had surplus funds to
put into these publications.
Under the leadership of President Tony Ralston, ACM
backed a project in AFIPS
(American Federation for Information Processing Societies, now
defunct) to launch a Scientific
American-style magazine for
computing. It was called Abacus.
The prototypes were slick and
compelling. Around 1975,
AFIPS declined to launch Abacus
for financial reasons. Ralston
tried to persuade ACM to launch
a scaled-down version of Abacus,
but it was too costly. The Abacus
concept, however, established a
beachhead in the minds of everyone thinking about the form of
an improved CACM.
In 1978, the Publications
Board, under the leadership of
Stu Lynn, forged a consensus
around a long-range publications
plan. The plan called for the
establishment of a line of self-supporting research Transactions
in areas of established need. New
Transactions in the areas of greatest backlog in CACM were of
highest priority. By 1983, six
Transactions were launched and
the corresponding departments
discontinued in CACM. Today,
there are 32 Transactions and
five more are on the way.
The long-range plan also
called for CACM to transform
into a concept called “Journal for
All Members” that included
aspects of Abacus. However, it
took until 1982 for enough of a
consensus to form around this
idea that it could be incorporated into CACM.
COMING TO A HEAD: 1982
When I was president of ACM
(1980–1982) I heard numerous
complaints about CACM. At
that time, six Transactions had
been launched or were about to
debut, and CACM’s corresponding research departments
were eliminated. Although the
backlogs were gone, so was the
technical content. Now the
readership had no news whatsoever about research advances in
computer systems, databases,
graphics, programming languages, or computer architecture. At least with the backlogs
they saw three-year-old material. Now they saw nothing.
I spent a lot of time working
with ACM leadership to forge a
consensus around the JAM ideas
as a way to transform CACM
and respond to the members.
The Council asked me to serve as
EIC when the new CACM
launched in early 1983. With the
active participation of ACM
Council, we put together a plan
for CACM with these elements:
1. News. Refocus from ACM
to industry. Eventually spin off
all ACM news and calendars into
a separate newsletter. (Done in
1990 with the debut of ACM
MemberNet.)
2. Computing Practices. Expand
coverage of technology topics,
case studies, and how-to articles
for practitioners, especially software developers. Hire new editors and writers to work
proactively with practitioners to
develop articles. (Ed Sibley was
the chief editor for this.)
3. Research. Continue the existing research departments in
emerging areas. Work with SIG
conferences to get best papers in
all other areas, especially in the
departments that had been spun
off to Transactions. Rewrite these
articles so they can be appreciated by ACM professionals outside the immediate research area
of the author. Where necessary,
get experts to write opening perspectives to help readers appreciate the context and significance
of a research paper.
To understand the “new” CACM, you need to understand the
“old” CACM that has preceded it.
