Communications of the ACM
Encyclopedia
Communications of the ACM (CACM) is the flagship monthly journal
of the Association for Computing Machinery
(ACM). First published in 1957, CACM is sent to all ACM members, currently numbering about 80,000. The articles are intended for readers with backgrounds in all areas of computer science
and information systems
. The focus is on the practical implications of advances in information technology and associated management issues; ACM also publishes a variety of more theoretical journals.
CACM straddles the boundary of a science magazine
, professional journal, and a scientific journal
. While the content is subject to peer review
(and is counted as such in many university assessments of research output), the articles published are often summaries of research that may also be published elsewhere. Material published must be accessible and relevant to a broad readership.
At the publisher's website, CACM is filed in the category "magazines".
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Academic journal
An academic journal is a peer-reviewed periodical in which scholarship relating to a particular academic discipline is published. Academic journals serve as forums for the introduction and presentation for scrutiny of new research, and the critique of existing research...
of the Association for Computing Machinery
Association for Computing Machinery
The Association for Computing Machinery is a learned society for computing. It was founded in 1947 as the world's first scientific and educational computing society. Its membership is more than 92,000 as of 2009...
(ACM). First published in 1957, CACM is sent to all ACM members, currently numbering about 80,000. The articles are intended for readers with backgrounds in all areas of computer science
Computer science
Computer science or computing science is the study of the theoretical foundations of information and computation and of practical techniques for their implementation and application in computer systems...
and information systems
Information systems
Information Systems is an academic/professional discipline bridging the business field and the well-defined computer science field that is evolving toward a new scientific area of study...
. The focus is on the practical implications of advances in information technology and associated management issues; ACM also publishes a variety of more theoretical journals.
CACM straddles the boundary of a science magazine
Science Magazine
Science Magazine was a half-hour television show produced by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation from 1975 to 1979.The show was hosted by geneticist David Suzuki, who previously hosted the daytime youth programme Suzuki On Science...
, professional journal, and a scientific journal
Scientific journal
In academic publishing, a scientific journal is a periodical publication intended to further the progress of science, usually by reporting new research. There are thousands of scientific journals in publication, and many more have been published at various points in the past...
. While the content is subject to peer review
Peer review
Peer review is a process of self-regulation by a profession or a process of evaluation involving qualified individuals within the relevant field. Peer review methods are employed to maintain standards, improve performance and provide credibility...
(and is counted as such in many university assessments of research output), the articles published are often summaries of research that may also be published elsewhere. Material published must be accessible and relevant to a broad readership.
At the publisher's website, CACM is filed in the category "magazines".
Influential articles
Many of the great debates and results in computing history have been published in the pages of CACM. Examples include:- The issue of what to call the then-fledgling field of computer scienceComputer scienceComputer science or computing science is the study of the theoretical foundations of information and computation and of practical techniques for their implementation and application in computer systems...
was raised by the editors of DATA-LINK in a letter to the editor of CACM, appearing in 1958, the first year of CACM. They called for giving the field a name "which is brief, definite, distinctive". The call was echoed by a wide range of suggestions, including comptology (Quentin Correll), hypology (P.A. Zaphyr), and datalogy (Peter NaurPeter NaurPeter Naur is a Danish pioneer in computer science and Turing award winner. His last name is the N in the BNF notation , used in the description of the syntax for most programming languages...
). - C. A. R. HoareC. A. R. HoareSir Charles Antony Richard Hoare , commonly known as Tony Hoare or C. A. R. Hoare, is a British computer scientist best known for the development of Quicksort, one of the world's most widely used sorting algorithms...
's Quicksort. - Martin DavisMartin DavisMartin David Davis, is an American mathematician, known for his work on Hilbert's tenth problem . He received his Ph.D. from Princeton University in 1950, where his adviser was Alonzo Church . He is Professor Emeritus at New York University. He is the co-inventor of the Davis-Putnam and the DPLL...
, George Logemann and Donald Loveland described in 1962 the DPLL algorithmDPLL algorithmThe Davis–Putnam–Logemann–Loveland algorithm is a complete, backtracking-based algorithm for deciding the satisfiability of propositional logic formulae in conjunctive normal form, i.e. for solving the CNF-SAT problem....
, containing the essential algorithm on which most modern SAT solversBoolean satisfiability problemIn computer science, satisfiability is the problem of determining if the variables of a given Boolean formula can be assigned in such a way as to make the formula evaluate to TRUE...
are based. - The "Revised report on the algorithm language ALGOL 60": A landmark paper in programming languageProgramming languageA programming language is an artificial language designed to communicate instructions to a machine, particularly a computer. Programming languages can be used to create programs that control the behavior of a machine and/or to express algorithms precisely....
design describing the result of the international ALGOLALGOLALGOL is a family of imperative computer programming languages originally developed in the mid 1950s which greatly influenced many other languages and became the de facto way algorithms were described in textbooks and academic works for almost the next 30 years...
committee. - The issue of changing ACM's name, since the "machinery" in question is no longer the size of a house and is now measured in micrometres.
- Kristen NygaardKristen NygaardKristen Nygaard was a Norwegian computer scientist, programming language pioneer and politician. He was born in Oslo and died of a heart attack in 2002.-Object-oriented programming:...
and Ole-Johan DahlOle-Johan DahlOle-Johan Dahl was a Norwegian computer scientist and is considered to be one of the fathers of Simula and object-oriented programming along with Kristen Nygaard.- Career :...
's original paper on SimulaSimulaSimula is a name for two programming languages, Simula I and Simula 67, developed in the 1960s at the Norwegian Computing Center in Oslo, by Ole-Johan Dahl and Kristen Nygaard...
-67. - Edsger W. Dijkstra's famous letter inveighing against the use of GOTOGotogoto is a statement found in many computer programming languages. It is a combination of the English words go and to. It performs a one-way transfer of control to another line of code; in contrast a function call normally returns control...
. The letter was reprinted in Jan 2008 in the 60th anniversary edition of CACM.
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- Dijkstra's original paper on the THE operating system. This paper's appendix, arguably even more influential than its main body, introduced semaphoreSemaphore (programming)In computer science, a semaphore is a variable or abstract data type that provides a simple but useful abstraction for controlling access by multiple processes to a common resource in a parallel programming environment....
-based synchronization. - Ronald L. Rivest, Adi ShamirAdi ShamirAdi Shamir is an Israeli cryptographer. He is a co-inventor of the RSA algorithm , a co-inventor of the Feige–Fiat–Shamir identification scheme , one of the inventors of differential cryptanalysis and has made numerous contributions to the fields of cryptography and computer...
, and Leonard M. Adleman's first public-key cryptosystem (RSA).