DOI: 10.1145/2492007.2492008
Moshe Y. Vardi and Victor Vianu
What is a flagship Publication?
Communications of the ACM was launched
in January 1958, with Alan J. Perlis as
Editor-in-Chief. The first issue included
articles such as “Tables for Automatic
Computation” and “A Programmed
Binary Counter for the IBM Type 650
Communications, which is, indeed, the
best known and most widely distributed publication of ACM. The flagship
metaphor suggests an image of a fleet
led by a flag officer. In the Task Force’s
opinion, however, ACM’s portfolio of
journals and magazines (see http://
dl.acm.org/) is not quite a “fleet.” In
fact, while ACM has an impressive
collection of high-quality journals
and magazines, the portfolio fails to
be more than the sum of its parts. For
example, one needs to simply visit the
home pages of a few ACM publications; there is no indication that the
individual journals are part of a cohesive portfolio. The Task Force recommended that ACM undertake to build
and develop a cohesive portfolio of
publications, rather than a loose collection, starting with a uniform design
of journal home pages.
The flagship and fleet metaphors
also suggest that it is not enough for
Communications to be a high-quality
monthly magazine. It also must be the
publication that ties together ACM’s
publication portfolio and adds value
to the portfolio as a whole. Currently,
Communications’ Research Highlights
section features articles selected from
(mostly) ACM research conferences,
but there is no real connection bet ween
Communications and other ACM journals and magazines. The flagship is
not leading the fleet! Discussions on
how to tie the flagship better to the fleet
are currently under way. We welcome
your views on this matter.
Moshe Y. Vardi and Victor Vianu