Call for Papers: CACM Practice Section

Submit articles for inclusion in CACM’s new Practice section, dedicated to enhancing practitioners’ understanding of computing and improving job performance.

Communications of the ACM (CACM) is the ACM’s flagship magazine, sent to all ACM members, CACM articles are furthermore available online open access and are permanently archived in the ACM Digital Library. Although CACM has long had a strong academic and research focus, it also publishes articles for practitioners.

CACM is promoting its Practice section to be co-equal with its long-standing Research section. The rebooted Practice section will accept submissions and publish articles of lasting interest to large numbers of computing practitioners. We are seeking articles that expand practitioners’ understanding of computing and enhance their job performance. If you could see your colleagues enthusiastically recommending an article to their friends and coworkers, we would love to publish it!

What We’re Looking for

We will consider submissions on any topic of broad interest to the world’s computing practitioners: the five million working in the United States and the millions more in other countries. Practice articles aim to inform and delight a sizable fraction of this audience. Articles need not be tied to academic or industrial research. They should, however, interest a significant number of readers. Highly specialized articles or articles demanding a deep technical background are unlikely to pass this test.

Good articles come in many flavors, and we can’t enumerate them all, but we’ll sketch the most promising possibilities. CACM‘s “Pracniques” feature of the ’60s through ’70s and Jon Bentley’s “Programming Pearls” column of the ’80s epitomize two excellent patterns: deep dives on specific problems and solutions, often including pithy, fluent code listings; and lucid expositions of emerging best practices. Articles similar in spirit could illuminate today’s computing landscape and elevate today’s coders.

Cautionary tales and corrections also have their place: hard-won lessons forged in adversity, postmortems on technologies that disappointed early hopes, corrigenda of authorities such as textbooks and language standards, and the debunking of bunco.

We are open to other ideas, but a tepid reception likely awaits submissions that stray far from these guidelines.

Our main evaluation criteria for submissions will be practicality and rigor. A practical article is actionable for large numbers of readers: It improves their craftsmanship in some tangible way. Rigor begins with clarity and concreteness. Submissions to Practice should facilitate appraisal (e.g., by providing working code) and prove usefulness with hard evidence (e.g., field experience from production environments).

Specs

An article is limited to 10 pages, roughly equivalent to 6,000 words. A submission may have previously been posted on a blog or online but not published elsewhere. Authors retain copyright, and articles are published with a CC-BY license.

See CACM‘s Author Guidelines for additional details and information that authors must know.

Aspiring authors are encouraged, but not required, to contact the Practice section chair Terence Kelly before writing to discuss their ideas for an article.

Unlike most journals, we expect many of our authors do not publish regularly, so we are willing to advise and work with authors before an article is submitted. All articles will be reviewed by the Practice section’s editorial board and outside reviewers. Those that meet ACM editorial standards, and be professionally edited by the CACM staff prior to publication.

The Practice section will not publish tutorial articles. Numerous excellent websites and blogs provide detailed descriptions of specific software packages, applications, and programming languages. We seek articles that offer in-depth and lasting insights into ideas, tools, techniques, and practices that enable practitioners to stay current and advance in a rapidly evolving profession.

We also will not publish opinion pieces. CACM has an active Opinion section for commentary on issues of broad interest to the computing community.

For further questions, please contact the CACM Editor-in-Chief and Practice section chair Terence Kelly.