Rights of TODS Readers, Authors and Reviewers

About eighteen months ago the ACM Publications Board approved a sweeping policy, termed the “Rights and Responsibilities in ACM Publishing” (http://www.acm.org/pubs/rights.html), summarizing the rights and responsibilities of readers, authors, reviewers, editors, program chairs and committees, and libraries vis-a-vis journals, transactions, magazines, conference proceedings, and SIG newsletters published by ACM [S02]. This policy document contains a mixture of current practice and goals for the near future. I and the TODS Editorial Board take these stated rights very seriously and have been working for over a year on developing mechanisms, policies, and procedures to ensure each of these rights. As a result of these efforts, TODS is the first ACM transactions to fully implement all 42 (!) rights listed here. I’ll discuss the steps we have and are taking. (I’ll not get into rights of Editorial Board members, except to state that those rights have also been fully implemented.) Included are several new policies that you as a prospective author or reviewer may appreciate.