publishing. The idea of bringing
select research articles back into
CACM was quite popular, but the
participants felt strongly that such
articles should be rewritten and
well edited to address CACM’s
broad readership. At the same
time, there was strong consensus
that CACM should continue to
publish submitted, peer-reviewed
articles, although with other new
content to be included in the
magazine, the space available for
submitted articles would be more
limited and thus the articles published would need to be of the
highest quality.
As far as content addressing
the interests of practitioners, the
general feeling was that Queue
provides high-quality content,
focusing on software practice,
and CACM should not attempt
to compete with Queue. In addition, the participants uniformly
expressed a desire to see a strong
news section and an “edgier”
opinions section (as put by one
focus group attendee: “Let us see
some blood on the opinion pages
of CACM”). There was a general
agreement that CACM does not
have the look and feel of a high-tech publication and that a
graphic redesign is long overdue.
Finally, there was a lively debate,
and no agreement, on the issue
of possibly renaming the publication. Many felt that 50-year-
old name “Communications of
the ACM” is a valuable brand;
others felt a new name is needed
to send a strong message that
CACM is being “rebooted.”
One of my main conclusions
from these conversations was
that the practical content offered
by Queue is of the highest quality
and likely of interest to a broad
cross-section of ACM members,
not just “young practitioners” for
which it was originally intended.
Thus, if we want CACM to serve
the broad interests of the ACM
membership, then it should offer
the core content available in
Queue. Thus, the Practice section of CACM should become
the print outlet for Queue. The
Queue editorial board should
continue to produce high-quality content and develop further
the Queue brand through an
enhanced presence on the ACM
Web site to serve practitioners.
With the decision to bring
Queue articles into CACMto
address the needs of practitioners, the content model for the
new CACM fell into place. The
focus will be on cutting-edge
material, organized in five sections: News, Practice, Breakthrough Research, Refereed
Articles, and Opinions and
Views.
News: The news section will
have a very distinct “voice,” covering research and practice in
computing on a global scale.
There will be an increased
emphasis on research from a
news perspective. As a monthly
publication, CACM will not
compete with more timely news
services, but rather analyze the
latest news in greater depth for
computing professionals and
interpret its potential impact.
ACM news of broad interests
will also be covered.
Practice: CACM will offer
coverage of cutting-edge, emerging technology issues. Such
material would be of interest to
both academics and practitioners. To obtain this material, the
Queue editorial board, led by
Stephen Bourne, will continue
to function as it has in the past—
providing articles, columns, and
interviews.
Breakthrough Research: The
goal is to bring research articles,
covering the broad spectrum of
computing research, back to
CACM. This will be a combined
effort of conference and program
chairs (ACM as well as non-ACM) and the CACM editorial
board to select the best research
material coming out of conferences and share that information
with the wide readership of
CACM. Each selected research
paper will be adapted to the
broad CACM readership and
will be preceded by a short
“Technical Perspective,” giving
readers an overview of the
important points and significance of the research. These perspectives will be written by noted
experts in the field. (This issue of
CACM contains two sample
research articles beginning on
page 104 that span the spectrum
of computing research: an article
on MapReduce, with perspective
by David Patterson, and an article on locally sensitive hashing,
with perspective by Bernard
Chazelle.)
Refereed Articles: CACM will
continue to publish, as it has
since its early days, peer-reviewed articles. Such articles
must be of the highest quality
and of interest to a broad sector
of the ACM membership. We
will seek both solicited and
unsolicited submissions. In particular, the CACM editorial
board will solicit survey and
review articles in topics of broad
interest.
Opinions and Views: The
final component in the content
model of the new CACM is a
section dedicated to opinions