Approved by the ACM Publications Board on April 20, 2023
The computing community expects ACM Publications to adhere to the highest standards for quality and trustworthiness and for ACM authors to engage in ethical practices while conducting research and reporting on the results of that research in ACM Publications. The community also expects ACM authors to respect the intellectual property rights of others by providing proper credit to all those contributing to the published Work and to give proper attribution to all those whose work is included in any new Work published by ACM. Likewise, the community expects ACM and its volunteers to provide the highest quality of service throughout the publication process, including an ethical process for managing submissions and peer review, free from bias, collusion, plagiarism, deception and other forms of misconduct that erode trust in ACM Publications and in science more generally.
To ensure that ACM’s Policy on Authorship is consistent with best practices and international publishing standards, ACM has become an active member of theCommittee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and is committed to ensuring that ACM’s Policy on Authorship is generally consistent with COPE’s definition of authorship, which can be foundhere. While there are many aspects of COPE’s definition of authorship that have influenced ACM’s Policy, there are three concepts in particular that impacted ACM’s updated Policy, including:
By updating ACM’s Policy on Authorship, it is ACM’s goal to provide additional guidance and clarity for what is acceptable publishing practice when publishing with ACM, especially with respect to the rapid technological changes taking place with the introduction of generative AI tools and technologies.
This policy applies to all submitted, accepted, and published articles and abstracts in all ACM Publication venues, including ACM journals, ACM conferences, ICPS conferences, ACM magazines, and ACM books.
ACM journals, magazines, and conferences, and ICPS conferences shall reference this Policy in Calls for Papers, Instructions for Authors, and other solicitations of submissions. The reference to this Policy should appear alongside other venue-specific policies. All of the above publication venues are also encouraged to incorporate acknowledgement of these representations into their respective paper submissions process.
ACM has established a more detailed criteria for determining if an individual’s contribution to a Work rises to the level of authorship or if they should be acknowledged for their contribution in the acknowledgements section of a work.
Anyone listed as author on an ACM submission must meet all the following criteria:
Note: All individuals who meet the above criteria should be listed as authors on the Work. The practices of gift authorship, guest authorship, ghost authorship* (see the FAQ for detailed definitions of these and related terms and for discussion of related, acceptable practices), and purchased authorship are clear violations of ACM Publications Policy and when proven may have severe consequences for those found to have participated in such practices. For more information about these practices, please see the FAQ document.
In addition, all persons listed as an author on an ACM submission certify that:
Authors who meet the above authorship criteria, but who die or become incapacitated prior to publication can be listed as co-authors with permission of their estate or next of kin.
Those who contributed to a Work, but whose contribution does not rise to the level of authorship, may be acknowledged at the end of the Work, before the Bibliography, with explicitly described roles, preferably using the roles found in the CRediT (Contributor Roles Taxonomy). In addition, those whose contribution does rise to the level of authorship, but who are unable to publish with ACM as a result of active publication bans may be acknowledged in the acknowledgment section of the Work.
Generative AI tools and technologies, such as ChatGPT, may not be listed as authors of an ACM published Work. The use of generative AI tools and technologies to create content is permitted but must be fully disclosed in the Work. For example, the authors could include the following statement in the Acknowledgements section of the Work: ChatGPT was utilized to generate sections of this Work, including text, tables, graphs, code, data, citations, etc. If you are uncertain about the need to disclose the use of a particular tool, err on the side of caution, and include a disclosure in the acknowledgements section of the Work.
Basic word processing systems that recommend and insert replacement text, perform spelling or grammar checks and corrections, or systems that do language translations are to be considered exceptions to this disclosure requirement and are generally permitted and need not be disclosed in the Work. As the line between Generative AI tools and basic word processing systems like MS-Word or Grammarly becomes blurred, this Policy will be updated.
All ACM submissions shall meet the following requirements:
In addition to the above requirements, all ACM authors shall be required to comply with all other ACM Publications Policies detailed in individual Calls for Papers and Instructions for authors of individual ACM Publications, including journals, conferences, books, newsletters, etc.
Please find a list of frequently asked questions and answers related to ACM's updated Policy on Authorshiphere.
ACM is an active member of theCommittee on Publication Ethics (COPE). COPE provides guidance and standards of practice for publishers and the scientific community, as well as educational resources that will help ACM authors to follow aceptable publishing practice. The following documents should be referenced in connection with ACM's Authorship Policy:
The ACM Director of Publications should be contacted for any:
Mailing address:
ACM Director of Publications
Association for Computing Machinery
1601 Broadway, 10th Floor
New York, NY 10019-7434
Phone: +1-212-626-0659
Or via email:
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