Publication Rights & Licensing Policy

Updated on December 19, 2025

Introduction

As from January 1, 2026, all articles published by ACM will be published on an Open Access basis in the ACM Digital Library and the entire archive of ACM published journal, conference, and magazine articles will be freely available on the Basic version of the ACM Digital Library.

With this transition, ACM aims to support a publishing ecosystem where access to and participation in computing research and education is no longer limited by financial or geographic barriers. By increasing access to its publications, ACM seeks to support a broader and more diverse exchange of ideas to the benefit of the global computing community. Open Access will strengthen the flow of knowledge across the computing community and the broader public, helping to ensure that researchers, practitioners, educators and students, and any one across the globe can engage more fully in conversations and activities that shape the computing field, for the benefit of society at large. Open Access publications have been proven to have significantly higher usage and impact, resulting in the acceleration of scientific discoveries, advancements, and innovation.

This transition comes with immediate and positive changes for ACM's global authorship, including changes to ACM's Publication Rights and Licensing Policy, formerly known as ACM's Copyright Policy. This Policy provides details about these changes and guidance for authors through the ACM rights-selection process. As with ACM's decision to become a fully Open Access Publisher, many of these changes were done to support ACM authors with options enabling them to comply with government open science mandates around the world and to retain the underlying intellectual property of their Work.

What remains the same?

On January 1, 2023, ACM ceased asking authors of accepted manuscripts to transfer copyright of their Work to ACM prior to publication. With ACM's transition to full Open Access in 2026, nothing changes in connection with author copyright retention. All authors publishing with ACM on a going forward basis retain copyright of their Works, but will continue to be required to grant ACM (1) a non-exclusive license to publish that Work in the ACM Digital Library, (2) the right to serve as the official Publisher of that Work with associated commercial rights, including the right to license the Work to third parties, such as for training by LLMs, and (3) the right to defend the integrity of that Work against various forms of infringement and misconduct by third parties on behalf of the author. 

For Works for hire, such as commissioned articles from ACM Magazines or ACM Public Statements published in the ACM Digital Library, ACM  will continue to retain copyright of these Works and will apply a CC-BY license to such Works.

For all Works published prior to January 1, 2023 ACM will not be changing the licensing or copyright assigned at the time of publication, although they will be made freely available to access and download from the Basic version of the ACM Digital Library for as long as ACM's Open Access model remains sustainable.  

What is changing?

Since April 1, 2013, ACM has offered all authors the option of publishing their Works on an Open Access basis, either through their affiliation with an ACM Open participating institution or by paying an Article Processing Charge (APC). Since that time, authors taking one of these pathways to Open Access have been provided an additional option to select one of six Creative Commons licenses to govern the sharing and reuse of their published Work by third parties. Additionally, all ACM authors have the right, but not the requirement, to assign a CC-0 license to place their research artifact(s) in the public domain, but this option must be implemented outside the ACM eRights selection process by the author assigning a CC-O license wherever those research artifacts may be hosting, inside or outside the ACM Digital Library.

In the past, authors unaffiliated with an ACM Open institution have had the option of taking the non-Open Access route, retaining copyright, and granting ACM an Exclusive License to Publish. Since all articles published by ACM after January 1, 2026 will be published Open Access, there will no longer be an option to grant ACM an Exclusive License to Publish their Work in the ACM Digital Library, and the Corresponding Author of every accepted article will be required to select either a CC-BY or CC-BY-NC-ND license and grant ACM a non-exclusive license to publish their Work in the ACM Digital Library. 

Copyright

All ACM authors retain the copyright to their published Works when they publish with ACM and they will continue to be the copyright owner after assigning one of the two available Creative Commons license options during the ACM rights selection process. For all published Works, ACM will typically publish a copyright ownership statement and the selected Creative Commons license in meta data for the article and visibly on the article itself.

Timing for the Transition

The new Open Access requirement shall apply for all ACM and ICPS Conference articles published after January 1, 2026. Note that ICPS Conference articles have had this requirement in place since 2024.

For ACM journal and magazine articles, the Open Access requirement shall apply for all ACM journal and magazine authors who complete the ACM rights process after 12:00am US Eastern time on January 1, 2026. For such articles, corresponding authors will be required to (1) be affiliated with an ACM Open participating institution, (2) pay an article processing charge (APC), or (3) be eligible to receive a geographic or financial hardship waiver in order to publish their Work with ACM.

For ACM journal and magazine authors who complete the ACM rights process before 12:00am US Eastern time on January 1, 2026 but are unaffiliated with an ACM Open institution or who opted not to pay an article processing charge (APC), their articles will be freely accessible in the Basic version of the ACM Digital Library and they will not be required to pay an article processing charge (APC). ACM journal and magazine authors who complete the ACM rights process before 12:00am US Eastern time on January 1, 2026 who are either affiliated with an ACM Open institution or opted to pay an article processing charge (APC) will have the option to select any of the six Creative Commons licenses available before 12:00am US Eastern time on January 1, 2026. At 12:00am US Eastern time, only CC-BY and CC-BY-NC-ND will be offered going forward.

Creative Commons License Options:

• CC-BY: Requires attribution but allows maximum reuse. This license allows reusers to distribute, remix, adapt, and build upon the material in any medium or format, so long as attribution is given to the creator and copyright holder of the Work. This license allows for commercial use.
• CC-BY-NC-ND: Requires attribution but allows limited reuse by prohibiting the use of the material for commercial purposes and the creation and distribution of derivative works. This license allows third parties to copy and distribute the material in any medium or format in unadapted form only, for noncommercial purposes only, and only so long as attribution is given to the creator and copyright holder of the Work.

Practical Considerations for Selecting Between CC-BY and CC-BY-NC-ND

• Both options obligate ACM to defend the Work against improper use by third parties.
• With both options, authors retain copyright to their Work
• Both options are irrevocable. Once the Work is published with a CC license, that license is permanently fixed to that Work. 
• With both options, the Work will be published on a perpetual Open Access basis through both the Basic and Premium versions of the ACM Digital Library.
• With both options, authors grant ACM (1) a non-exclusive license to publish the Work in the ACM Digital Library, (2) the right to serve as the official Publisher of that Work with associated commercial rights, including the right to license the Work to third parties on the author's behalf, such as for training by LLMs or as part of aggregated databases. However, by selecting a CC-BY-NC-ND license authors limit third parties from reusing or sharing the Work for commercial purposes and prevent  third parties from creating  derivatives or adaptations of the Work without the authors' or  Publisher's explicit written permission.
• While the relationship between CC licensing and LLMs is still relatively new and uncharted territory and the various LLM's ability to provide proper attribution to creators and copyright holders of intellectual property in their outputs is still in its infancy, the selection of a CC-BY License is generally perceived to provide LLMs with more freedom to train on content online without obtaining the creators' or copyright holders' explicit permission, whereas the selection of a CC-BY-NC-ND license is generally perceived to provide more limitations on what content LLMs can train on without obtaining explicit permission from creators or copyright holders. 
• Many public and private funders of scholarly research around the world have stated a preference for the use of the CC-BY 4.0 license, however, most funders have not mandated that grant recipients use a CC-BY license, leaving the decision up to the author. Authors should check the specific policies of their funders and institutions prior to making the selection in the ACM rights process.
• Even though the Work as a whole will be assigned either a CC-BY or CC-BY-NC-ND, this license does not apply to third party material included in the Work, such as images or photographs which may be copyright protected and require permission from the original copyright holder to reproduce. Such third party material will be indicated in writing in the Work itself. It is the author’s responsibility to obtain permission to use third party material in the Work and insert the appropriate copyright statement and credit line alongside the third party material. Permission is not required for third party material where only a link to that material is provided without reproducing the third party material in the Work itself.

Creative Common Zero (CC-0) License

There is one additional CC License that ACM Authors may apply to their research artifacts (i.e. - data, code, etc.) called CC-0. CC-O allows creators to place their Works in the worldwide public domain  and waive copyright ownership over their Work. CC-0 is no longer offered in the ACM Rights system for ACM Publications, because it places the Work in the public domain and is irrevocable, which could create problems for the author and ACM as the Publisher in the future. However, when ACM Authors are depositing their research artifacts either in the ACM DL or a third-party site such as GITHUB, some authors may wish to assign a CC0 license to those research artifacts. ACM cautions the use of CC0 unless the author has given significant consideration to this and would like to give away their copyright and allow unrestricted use of their research artifacts by the public with no requirement to provide attribution to the original source. When ACM Authors choose to apply a CC0 license to their research artifacts, they should indicate this alongside the artifact(s) wherever that artifact is hosted inside or outside the ACM Digital Library.

Self-Archiving and Posting Rights

All ACM published authors of magazine articles, journal articles, and conference articles  articles have the right to post pre-submitted (also known as "pre-prints"), submitted, accepted, and peer-reviewed versions of their work in any and all of the following sites:

• Author's Homepage
• Author's Institutional Repository
• Any Repository legally mandated by the agency or funder funding the research on which the work is based
• Any Non-Commercial Repository or Aggregation that does not duplicate ACM tables of contents. Non-Commercial Repositories are defined as Repositories owned by non-profit organizations that do not charge a fee to access deposited articles and that do not sell advertising or otherwise profit from serving scholarly articles.

In addition, authors of ACM articles published with a CC License may post the final published Version of Record (VoR) of their article to any of the sites listed above, as well as commercial repositories and other sites. All authors of ACM published articles may assign a different license (i.e. - CC or non-CC License) to the pre-print version of their Work than they assign to the final published Version of Record in the ACM Digital Library. 

Authors should include an appropriate citation and attribution statement on all Submitted or Accepted versions of the Work similar to the following:

• "© {Owner/Author | ACM} {Year}. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here for your personal use. Not for redistribution. The definitive Version of Record was published in {SourcePublication}, http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/{number}."

For the avoidance of doubt, an example of a site ACM authors may post all versions of their work to is arXiv.  ACM does request authors, who post to ArXiv or other permitted sites, to also post the published version's Digital Object Identifier (DOI) alongside the pre-published version on these sites, so that easy access may be facilitated to the published "Version of Record" upon publication in the ACM Digital Library.

Examples of sites ACM authors may not post their work to are ResearchGate, Academia.edu, Mendeley, or Sci-Hub, as these sites are all either commercial or in some instances utilize predatory practices that violate copyright, which negatively impacts both ACM and ACM authors.

Current ACM Publications Policy is that ACM sponsored and ICPS conferences may not impose embargoes on authors posting pre-prints of submissions on arXiv or disqualify such submissions that have already been posted on arXiv at the time of submission or during the peer review process. 

Requirements for ACM Books Authors

Unlike other types of ACM Publications listed above, ACM Books authors shall continue to be given the option of signing either a Copyright Transfer & Publishing Agreement or Exclusive License to Publish Agreement. The reason for this is that there are fundamental differences in how books are published, marketed, sold, and distributed via the ACM Digital Library, 3rd party channels, and in print that relate primarily to commercial considerations, financial remuneration for ACM Books authors, and posting or self-archiving policies for ACM Books, which differs from ACM's general posting and self-archiving policy for journal, conference, and magazine authors.

With that said, it is ACM’s goal to transition the ACM Books program to an Open Access model provided this can be done in a financially sustainable way.  For more information, please see the Publishing Policies related to ACM Books authors.

Definitive Versions of Record, Official Publication Dates, and Corrections to the Version of Record

Preserving the scholarly record "as published" is a critical component of maintaining the community and public's trust in scientific publications in general and trust in ACM specifically. As a result, ACM is committed to the publication and long term digital preservation of published works in the ACM Digital Library and via several third-party digital preservations initiatives, including CLOCKS and Portico. ACM will create and maintain a definitive Version of Record (VoR) of all ACM published Works and share these with our digital preservation providers. There are instances where VoRs are hidden in the ACM Digital Library for legal or public safety reasons, to comply with other ACM Publications Policies, such as in connection with the implementation of ACMs Name Change Policy, when certain Retractions  or Corrected Versions of Record (CVoR) are added to ACM Digital Library citation pages. Please see ACM's Publications Policy on the Withdrawal, Correction, Retraction, and Removal of Works from ACM Publications and ACM DL

Persistent Unique Identifiers for Every ACM Article

The DOI (Digital Object Identifier) is the scholarly publishing standard (ISO 26324) identifier for articles published by ACM in the ACM Digital Library. Every article in the ACM Digital Library shall have one and only one DOI.

The official publication date of an ACM published article will be considered the date on which the article’s official Version of Record (VoR) is published online in the ACM Digital Library, and the official VoR of an ACM article shall be the final peer reviewed, accepted, edited, tagged, and identified (using a DOI or other standardized identifier) definitive version that appears in ACM Publications (i.e. - journals, magazines, conference proceedings, newsletters, books, etc.) inside the ACM Digital Library.

Only the official VoR or in CVoR shall be considered the “Published” version of the Work for purposes of attribution, rights & permissions, prior art, investigations into potential ethics & plagiarism violations or other forms of infringement, and relevant open access embargo periods. If a new Work is substantially developed, i.e., it contains at least 25% new substantive material, it is considered a new Derivative Work or Major Revision. It is important to note that word counts are not an absolute measure, but rather a useful guide, and in general the author must use their discretion when determining if a new article is to be considered a new Derivative Work, a Minor Revision, or a Major Revision. The owner/author controls all rights in the new Work and may do as they wish with it. For new Derivative or Major Revision Works, the author should incorporate a citation to the previous work.

For example:

"This work is based on an earlier work: TITLE, in PUBLICATION, {VOL#, ISS#, (DATE)} © Author, {YEAR}. http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/{number}"

If the work is a *Minor Revision, the copyright or exclusive publishing license remains with ACM and the Owner should use best efforts to display the ACM citation, 

"© {Owner/Author {YEAR}. This is a minor revision of the work published in PUBLICATION, {VOL#, ISS#, (DATE)} http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/{number}"

The appropriate notice should appear both within the document and in the metadata associated with the document. Instructions for how to do this will be found in the instructions for authors in ACM's various publications.

Solicited Works

From time to time, ACM solicits works for publication. Examples are columns, invited works, award lectures, and keynote speeches. ACM asks authors of such works not to distribute copies or post these works on their Home Pages until ACM has published them. Authors who wish to circulate before publication should get permission from ACM. ACM considers lectures and speeches to be published at the time they are given.

Permissions Granted by ACM

ACM grants gratis permission for individual digital or hard copies made without fee for use in academic classrooms and for use by individuals in personal research and study. For Works not published under a Creative Commons license, further reproduction or distribution requires explicit permission and possibly a fee.

ACM is now a signatory of the STM Permission Guidelines Initiative, which supports an approach to research based on common decency, respect, fairness and mutual trust. These Guidelines are built to allow Signatory STM Publishers to use limited amounts of material in other original published works without charge, and with a minimum of effort needed for permissions clearance. ACM joined the initiative in 2022 to lower the burden on authors to obtain third party permissions when authoring works for ACM and third party publishers.

All copies should carry the original citation, the appropriate copyright and notice of permission on the first page or initial screen of the document. 

Most permission requests should go through ACM's automated rights system available in the ACM Digital Library and pointed to by [email protected]. Requests that cannot be handled through the online system will take longer to resolve: requestors may expect a response to their inquiry within seven business days. 

Fair Use for Educational Purposes

Definition of classroom use: Copying and distributing single works by a university/college instructor, where no fee is charged to the students, and the distribution is limited to students enrolled in a university/college course and their instructors.

• Course Material - Permission granted without fee if the course material is produced without charge to the student. (See Commercially produced Course Packs below.)

• Electronic Reserves - Permission granted without fee provided the library or institution has an authentication mechanism for controlled access to the server and in cases of Works not published under a CC license to the ACM-published work. A college, university or other accredited institution may place a copy of a definitive Version of Record of the Work in its library's electronic reserves for the duration of its educational needs for that work, for all Works published under a Creative Commons license. For Works not published under a Creative Commons license,  the same rights will apply, provided the access is limited to its enrolled students (including those in its distance learning programs), faculty, and staff. 

• Distance Learning - Permission granted without fee for distance learning students enrolled at the institution. They have the same access rights to those ACM copyrighted materials licensed by their institution as any other student. 

• Interlibrary Loan (ILL) - Since all ACM Publications are freely available in the Basic version of the ACM Digital Library, except for ACM Books titles, anyone with an internet connection may read, download, and print articles. Articles published under a Create Commons license may also be shared freely. For ACM Books and other Works not published under a Creative Commons license, permission granted without fee for an institution with an ACM Digital Library license to download and print works for Interlibrary Loan. The Digital Library may be used as the source for the printed copy. 

• Walk-Ins - Permission granted without fee for access to all ACM publications, print or electronic, by all members of the community which a subscribing library is charted to serve.

• Open Access / Creative Commons Material - Permission is granted without fee, provided proper attribution is given to the Author(s) and Publisher at the time of use.

Commercial Republication

Definition of commercial republication: Any use that is not personal or non-profit educational use. Includes reprinting by trade and scholarly publishers, and use in corporate settings and their web sites, both internal and external. No direct profit need be realized from the publication or sale of ACM material.

For Works not published under a CC-BY license, commercial use normally requires a license and payment of release fees. For such Works, all reproductions other than those listed in this document require specific permission and a fee payable to ACM.  This includes republishing in textbooks, commercially-produced course packs sold to students, anthologies, and other edited publications, and posting or other electronic distributions, unless use is done in connection with the STM Permission Guidelines Initiative. 

• Commercially Produced Course Packs - Licensed material not published under a CC-BY license in course packs sold to students requires express permission from ACM. Licensed material published under a CC-BY-NC-ND requires express permission from the copyright holder (i.e. - in most cases the authors) or ACM. Send requests to [email protected] or go to http://www.copyright.com.

• Print permission - Works published under a CC-BY do not require a written grant of permission or consultation with the copyright holder or the payment of fees to the copyright holder or ACM.  Works published under a CC-BY-NC-ND may not be printed or distributed without express written permission from the copyright holder or ACM.

• Electronic permission - Works published under a CC-BY do not require a written grant of permission or consultation with the copyright holder or the payment of fees to the copyright holder or ACM. Works published under a CC-BY-NC-ND may not be distributed electronically without express written permission from the copyright holder or ACM.

• Multiple copies - Works published under a CC-BY do not require a written grant of permission or consultation with the copyright holder or the payment of fees to the copyright holder or ACM. Works published under a CC-BY-NC-ND may not be distributed electronically without express written permission from the copyright holder or ACM. Works published without a Creative Commons license must obtain written permission from ACM to produce multiple copies of Works for distribution to more than ten peers, co-workers, clients, etc. and will require a transactional license from the CCC and payment of the required per copy fee. Send requests to [email protected] or go to http://www.copyright.com.

• Software - Owners/Authors of software grant ACM a non-exclusive permission to publish and manage all rights and permissions themselves.

3rd Party Permissions

ACM is a signatory to the  STM Permissions Guidelines, which simplifies the process for third parties (including researchers) to reuse ACM published content in new works under development. This is a broad-based publisher initiative that includes the vast majority of publishers in computing literature. Other signatories of these guidelines are listed here. It is our goal to simplify the process of publishing with ACM.

ACM publications staff will monitor requests for permission not handled by ACM's automated permissions system which is accessed via the ACM Digital Library. Persons granted permission to copy an ACM published work should display the appropriate Publication Notice followed by: "Included here by permission."

Edited Collections

Edited collections such as conference proceedings volumes or journal issues  are copyrighted as a whole by ACM. Starting  January 1, 2023, authors will retain the copyright of individual components of those Works, such as articles, letters-to-the-editor, abbreviated works, etc  and grant ACM either an exclusive or non-exclusive license to publish in both print and online forms, and also grants  ACM the right to transform the work into any formats as necessary for use within the ACM Digital Library or other media.

No ACM-copyrighted or exclusively licensed collection may be posted for open distribution without prior permission from ACM and before it has been included in the ACM Digital Library unless it is governed by a CC-BY license. Approved distributions must include a notice of this permission along with the copyright notice for the Work. 

Links

ACM treats links as citations (references to objects) rather than as incorporations (embedding of objects). Permission is not needed to create links to citations in The ACM Digital Library or Online Guide to Computing Literature. ACM encourages the widespread distribution of links to the definitive Version of Records of its copyrighted works in the ACM Digital Library and does not require that authors obtain prior permission to include such links in their new works.

However, someone who creates a work or a service whose pattern of links substantially duplicates an ACM-copyrighted volume or issue should get prior permission from ACM. One example: the creator of "A Table of Contents for the Current Issue of TODS" -- consisting of citations and active links to author-versions of the works in the latest issue of TODS -- needs ACM permission because that creator is reproducing an ACM-copyrighted work. If all the links in the "Table of Contents" pointed to the ACM-held definitive Version of Records, ACM would normally give permission because then the new work advertises an ACM work. To avoid misunderstandings, consult with ACM before duplicating an ACM work via links.

If an author wishes to embed a copyrighted object---rather than a link---in a new work, that author needs to obtain the copyright holder's permission.

Distributions From non-ACM Servers

Service providers do not need to obtain prior permission from ACM to locate and dispense links to the ACM-held definitive Version of Records of works, but they do need permission if they are making, collecting, or distributing copies of ACM-copyrighted or licensed works.

Other Related Policies

Prior Publication and Simultaneous Submissions Policy

Please see Prior Publication and Simultaneous Policy

Conference Publication Policy

Please see the Conference Publication Policy for additional expectations related spcifically to ACM Conference Publications.

Submitting and Investigating Potential Violations of this Policy

See Policy on Submitting and Investigating Claims

Communicating Results of Investigations

See Policy on Communicating Results of Investigations

Appealing Violation Decisions

See Appealing Policy Violation Decisions

Contact ACM

The ACM Director of Publications should be contacted for any:

• Questions about the interpretation of this policy
• Questions about appeals of decisions
• Requests for deviations from, or extensions to, this policy
• Reporting of egregious behavior related to this policy, including purposeful evasion of the policy or false reporting

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:
[email protected]