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. It is sent to all ACM members and its articles are available open access. Although CACM has long had a strong academic and research focus, it also regularly publishes articles of interest to practitioners.

CACM is promoting its Practice section to be co-equal with its long-standing Research section. The new Practice section will accept submissions and publish articles of lasting interest to computing practitioners. We are seeking articles that enhance 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!

We are soliciting articles for CACM’s new Practice section!

What We’re Looking for

The scope of this section includes technical advances, development practices, organizational structures, examples of successful systems, and other topics of interest to computing practitioners. Articles need not be tied to academic or industrial research. However, they should be of interest to a significant number of practitioners. Highly specialized articles or articles demanding a deep technical background are unlikely to pass this test.

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 it is published with a CC-BY license.

Submission details and guidelines for authors are available online.

Potential authors are encouraged, but not required, to contact the Practice section’s co-chairs before submission to discuss their article:

Co-Chairs:

Unlike most journals, we expect many of our authors do not publish regularly, so we are willing to advise and work with authors before an article is submitted.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, meet ACM editorial standards, and be professionally edited by the CACM staff.

The Practice section will not publish vocational or tutorial articles on technologies. 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 at section co-chairs Nachi Nagappan and Terence Kelly.