ACM’s Annual Report for FY12

Highlights of aCM activities:
July 1, 2011–June 30, 2012

ACM, the Association for Computing Machinery, is an international scientific and educational organization dedicated to advancing the arts, sciences, and applications of information technology.

Publications

The centerpiece of ACM Publications is the ACM Digital Library (DL) serving as the primary distribution mechanism for all the association’s publications as well as host to scientific periodicals and a set of conference proceedings from external organizations. The DL, now available at 2,650 institutions in 64 countries, boasts an estimated 1. 5 million users worldwide. The result of this widespread availability led to more than 15 million full-text downloads in FY12.

ACM is committed to continually increasing the scope of material available via the DL. Last year, over 26,000 full-text articles were added, bringing total DL holdings to 350,000 articles. ACM’s Guide to Computing Literature is also integrated within the DL. More than 285,000 works were added to the bibliographic database in FY12, bringing the total Guide coverage to more than two million works.

ACM is the publisher of 74 periodicals, including 40 journals and transactions, eight magazines, and 26 newsletters as of year-end FY12. During the year, ACM added 479 conference and related workshop proceedings to its portfolio.

In addition, a collection of 1,200 e-books was assimilated into the DL last year, available to all ACM members. Moreover, the ACM International Conference Proceedings Series (ICPS) published 150 new volumes, the most in any year since the program was launched.

Under the guidance and strate-
gic planning of ACM’s Publications
Board, the ACM Author-Izer Service
debuted in the Digital Library this
year. This service enables authors
to generate and post links on their
home page or institutional repository
for visitors to download the definitive
version of their articles at no charge.

education

ACM continues to lead the computer science education community through the work of the ACM Education Board, the ACM Education Council, ACM SIGCSE, Computer Science Teachers Association (CSTA), and ACM Education Policy committee.

ACM remains at the forefront of the Computing in the Core (CinC) advocacy coalition working to promote computer science as a distinct discipline in K–12 U.S. education. This year CinC engaged both the House and Senate committees responsible for reauthorization of the Elementary

aCM is committed
to continually
increasing the
scope of material
available via the
Digital Library.

and Secondary Education Act to advocate for computer science. Indeed, the coalition’s membership has grown by more than 50% over the last year.

ACM launched a new initiative to address the grand challenges of expanding K–12 computer science education in the U.S. Google, Microsoft, ACM, CSTA, the National Center for Women and Information Technology, and the National Science Foundation are partnering to lay the groundwork for scaling AP computer science reform.

ACM’s Education Board is directing the formation of an annual Taul-bee-like survey for non-Ph.D.-grant-ing institutions in computing.

The CSTA continues to thrive as a key component in ACM’s efforts to see real computer science count at the high school level. CSTA membership reached an all-time high of 12,000 this year. In addition, CSTA has been an active and important partner in AP computer science reform.

Several SIGs hosted innovative educational programs and special projects throughout the year. SIG Bioinformatics organized a special program—Women in Bioinformatics—that was sponsored by the U.S. National Science Foundation. SIGCAS and the Committee on Professional Ethics (COPE) jointly ran a workshop on teaching computer ethics. And SIGCOMM maintains its education website ( http://education.sig-comm.org) where members of the community can share education-re-lated resources.

 

Professional Development The Practitioners Board and Professional Development Committee directed many new products and initiatives designed for computing professionals and managers. ACM’s Learning Center (http://learning. acm.org) offers products, services, videos, resources, webinars, and courses designed especially for prac-