No, they did not. They made it free to download, but open-access† licensing would permit third parties to legally mirror it on servers that don't block access from Algeria or Switzerland or privacy-focused browsers, and so far that licensing hadn't happened. I'm happy to see that apparently it's happening today.
> Making the first 50 years of its publications and related content freely available expresses ACM’s commitment to open access publication and represents another milestone in our transition to full open access within the next five years.
I wouldn't have understood that nuance without the context given by your comment, but in my developer mind I analogize "freely available" to a "source available" license that they took on, as a step towards going open access ("free and open source") over time. I'm also happy to see that that transition seems on track as planned.
Only up to 2000. It’s unclear if the catalog from 2000 to 2025 will be fully made open. There may be legal obstacles if the originating authors and institutions don’t consent.
I haven’t been able to find anything that states otherwise. What changes in January is the policy for new publications.
I don't think old publications will become open access, only new ones.
They made most of their archive open access a few years ago.
No, they did not. They made it free to download, but open-access† licensing would permit third parties to legally mirror it on servers that don't block access from Algeria or Switzerland or privacy-focused browsers, and so far that licensing hadn't happened. I'm happy to see that apparently it's happening today.
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† As defined in the Berlin Declaration 22 years ago: https://openaccess.mpg.de/Berlin-Declaration
So that's what this wording means:
> Making the first 50 years of its publications and related content freely available expresses ACM’s commitment to open access publication and represents another milestone in our transition to full open access within the next five years.
( from https://www.acm.org/articles/bulletins/2022/april/50-years-b... )
I wouldn't have understood that nuance without the context given by your comment, but in my developer mind I analogize "freely available" to a "source available" license that they took on, as a step towards going open access ("free and open source") over time. I'm also happy to see that that transition seems on track as planned.
Only up to 2000. It’s unclear if the catalog from 2000 to 2025 will be fully made open. There may be legal obstacles if the originating authors and institutions don’t consent.
I haven’t been able to find anything that states otherwise. What changes in January is the policy for new publications.
Everything is going to be open, they have been saying this for ages. The issue isnt rights, they have those, its been funding this.
What's different legally about the publications prior to 2000?
I don’t know, but they only opened the backfile up to 2000: https://www.acm.org/articles/bulletins/2022/april/50-years-b...
Or at least they haven’t explicitly announced anything in that vein for post-2000.
No, there appears to be archives of past journals on the site.