I think this is a sad evolution which will ultimately result in fewer people reading the journals & transactions (which are often quite interesting). I specifically joined the ACM for the print versions of Communications and Transactions, and have a bookshelf dedicated to both. I haven't seen any other compelling reasons for an ACM membership, so this will mean farewell from me.<p>Reading, especially technical material, on screen is still an inferior experience to paper. Even with my Remarkable. Flipping pages is slow, browsing is slow, it's impossible to have multiple documents open side by side.<p>Maybe I'm just an old grouch. But I'm not happy about this.
With fewer and fewer printed works, I wonder how future archeologists will discover human knowledge from our era. Especially after a world-wide catastrophe. Human language written in the physical world seems more durable long-term than the electrons in a flash drive.
An A4 e-reader is one of the best things I purchased despite being insanely expensive for what it was and having slightly dubious firmware.<p>I used to print stuff out to read as I find backlit screens and notifications on my tablet annoying when you are trying to grok a paper or read a textbook.<p>Mine is a Boox Max 3, though Sony had an offering aimed at lawyers etc and I think some people like ones by remarkable too, though I have never tried them as my one hasn't broken yet and they are rather expensive.
A magazine moving to the cloud dissolves in thin air. Reading the articles with a low entry barrier is something for the beach, the cafe and the train. That will not happen eletronically. Also "casual reading", where I read a 2nd or 3rd article, besides the one that drew my attention, won't happen anymore.<p>Charles Simonyi said in his Bravo Demo about electronic documents "there is no such thing as an original anymore" <a href="https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/q_Na1SJXSBg?t=371s" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/q_Na1SJXSBg?t=371s</a><p>I may execute a special right of termination of my 15-year membership.
I know there’ll be folks who will still want things in print. I wonder why there isn’t a print-on-demand service for those folks.<p>It also sucks for folks who want the content, but don’t want to have to pay a subscription in perpetuity.<p>Maybe getting rid of the print option also obviates the need to do page layout, but if the publications are still made available in PDF or ePub formats, there will still be a need.
It's a shame, my SO (completely not in IT related work) does enjoy reading my ACM magazines, and despite being in very different industries, we do see and share quite similar experiences.<p>Perhaps it's time I obtain one of those A4 e-ink readers!
Communications of the ACM will still be printed. The journals and transactions are a compendium of research papers that are too numerous for anyone to read in their entirety. Moreover, you can still print the ones that you’re interested in. This change is strictly better.
I'm and old grouch, but my old grouch eyes can't do the magazine(s), so I am glad they're leaving. I have to read them with one eye closed and a magnifying glass and so I stopped. And don't get me started on PDFs and horizontal scrolling!<p>It's so embarrassing that the C.S. cobbler has no accessible shoes. I lean on ArXiv and HTML output but I am losing out on some research and conversations which saddens me.
It's kind of a sad trend for academic publications. I still remember those interesting things of those journals I read from journals shared on coffee tables in our building
This thing we're doing where we centrally host everything as opposed to creating a bunch of physical copies, it's going to come back to bite us and relying on the internet archive as the global backup isn't a great solution
Now the print publication has ceased I hope they remove the archaic submission format requirements for the journals which were justified mainly due to the print edition
Maybe they will also stop sending snail mail and use electronic email as well. Sending a letter across the world to remind me to renew my subscription seems quiet pointless in 2023.
A bit disingenuous, I think<p>> ACM wants to be as environmentally friendly as possible<p>Distribution is declining, so total environmental cost per issue is declining naturally. Even then, it's a sunk cost. No matter how many readers use the printed journal or how often they read it, the cost is the same. But, every time a reader uses a computer, e-reader, whatever there's now an additional cost. If you want to cease printing for financial reasons, just say that and don't use the fig leaf of environmental friendliness.