ACM to go paper-free! Good? Bad?

Communications of the ACM

ACM Inroads

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XRDS: Crossroads

What are the PROS and CONS of this? What are the PROS and CONS of any publication or book being paper free?

1) I like getting SIGACT News on paper since 

a) It reminds me to read it

b) Reading on the screen is either on my phone which is awkward (especially for math) or my desktop (so I have to be AT my desktop). 

I DO NOT think this is my inner-Luddite talking. 

 

2) QUESTION:  Will SIGACT News and JACM and other ACM publications continue to have  page limit for articles? When I was SIGACT News Book Rev Col editor, and now as Open Problems Col editor, I have often had to ask the editor Can I have X pages this time? The answer was always yes,  so perhaps there never really was a page limit. But is having no page limit good? Not necessarily. Having a limit may force you to only write down the important parts.

3)  PRO: Its good for the ecology to not make so much paper.  While this is certainly true, I think the world  needs to rethink our entire consumer society to really make a difference for the ecology. In fact, I wonder if e-cars, carbon-offsets,  and paper free products make us feel good without really helping much.

4) CON but good timing: I recently had an open problems column with two co-authors. One of them is not in the ACM and is not in the community, but wanted to see a copy of the article. I have arranged to have a paper copy of that one issue sent to him.  If I had published this column in 2024, I could not do this. And saying Just go to link BLAH' does not have the same impact as PAPER. I could have printed it out for him, but that just does not seem like the same as having an official copy. 

I DO think this is my inner-Luddite talking. Or his.

5) For quite some time computer science  conference proceedings have not been on paper (there have been a variety of ways this is done). Before that time the following happened a lot: I am in Dave Mounts office talking about something (e.g., who should teach what). He gets a phone call but motions that it will be short so I should still hang out. While hanging out I pick up a RANDOM proceedings of the conference RANDOM  and find the one or two article in it about Ramsey Theory and read them, or at least note them and read them later. That kind of RANDOM knowledge SEEMS less common  in a paper-free age. But maybe not.  I HAVE clicked around the web and accidentally learned things. Like the facts I learned for my post on simulation theory here.

6) Similar to point 5- I used to go to the math library and RANDOMLY look at a volume of the American Math Monthly or some other similar journal and look at some articles in it.  But now that's harder since they have stopped getting journals on papers and only get them electronically. To be fair, paper versions of the journals are EXPENSIVE. 

7) In the year 1999 my grad student Evan Golub got his PhD and he had to bring a PAPER copy of it to some office where they measured margins and stuff of EVERY PAGE to make sure it was within university specs.  Why? Because in an earlier era this was important for when the thesis was put on microfilm.  Were they doing that in 1999? I doubt it.  Some of my younger readers are thinking OH, they didn't have LaTeX packages that take care of margins for you.  Actually they DID have such packages but, to be fair, the requirement that the university literally measures margins on EVERY PAGE was completely idiotic. I am  happy to say that in 2007 when my student Carl Anderson  got his PhD nobody needed a paper version. I do not know when the rules changed but I am glad they did. 

8) The ACM should promote this paper free change by doing a rap song like Progressive Insurance did here. 

9) Recently I had a paper with 3 co-authors that all three of us, and some others, proofread (I thought) very carefully. The referee accepted it but with a somewhat nebulous this paper needs a better proofreading. I then PRINTED IT OUT and read it AWAY FROM MY COMPUTER (the paper is on overleaf) with a RED PEN and I found LOTS of stuff to fix that we all missed before. So there are some advantages to getting OFF of the computer, though that may require PRINTING. (I also blogged about this topic here.)