ACM OPEN

A Sustainable Approach to Open Access

ACM Open is designed to help institutions support Open Access publishing at scale while ensuring continued access to the premium version of the ACM Digital Library. By removing Article Processing Charges (APCs) for authors and offering a transparent, tiered pricing model, ACM Open provides a cost-effective way for institutions to contribute to a more open and accessible computing research ecosystem.

How ACM Open Works

• Unlimited Open Access Publishing – Corresponding authors at participating institutions can publish an unlimited number of Open Access articles without incurring Article Processing Charges (APCs).
• Institutional Access and Benefits – Institutions receive Premium access to the ACM Digital Library, ensuring their researchers and students benefit from ACM’s extensive collection of computing research, with unrestricted access to ACM Digital Library’s full suite of research tools and features, supporting advanced discovery, collaboration and workflow efficiency.
• Fair and Transparent Pricing – For academic institutions, costs are determined based on an institution’s historical publishing activity, ensuring a sustainable and predictable payment model. For corporate pricing, please refer here. For government pricing, please refer here. If an institution is a degree-granting, accredited institution they receive academic pricing. If an institution is non-academic and for-profit, they receive corporate pricing. If an institution is non-profit, does not grant degrees, and has a government affiliation, they receive government pricing. Please contact ACM to confirm your institution type and price.

2026 Tiered Pricing: Ensuring Fair and Predictable Costs

ACM Open follows a tiered pricing structure, aligning institutional costs with historical publication activity to ensure fair and scalable participation.

The following tier pricing applies to academic institutions only, in effect until December 31, 2027:

Tiers Level	Article Output Range	Tier Pricing ($)
1	75+	$95,000
2	60-74	$70,000
3	40-59	$50,000
4	30-39	$35,000
5	20-29	$25,000
6	16-19	$20,000
7	12-15	$15,000
8	8-11	$12,000
9	4-7	$9,500
10	0-3	$6,000 or DL Read Spend, whichever is lower

Ramp-Up Pricing

Ramp-Up Pricing assists new institutions with the cost of transitioning to ACM Open for the first time or renewing institutions with an increased ACM Open cost due to publishing output resulting in a shift to a higher cost tier. Please refer to the Ramp-Up Pricing tables here for 3-year, 4-year, and 5-year options.

The ACM OPEN All-In Model

ACM offers an all-in model to support consortia and government-funded Open Access transitions. This model follows the same principles as the tier-based approach, with pricing based on a three-year publishing history and applied consistently worldwide.

The key difference is that groups can distribute costs among participants to align with funding structures. Pricing is determined by analyzing the past three years of publishing output, assigning costs per article for proceedings and journals, and calculating an all-inclusive annual publishing fee for the group. The participant list remains fixed for the duration of the agreement.

Contact us for more information at [email protected].

Institutions already participating in ACM Open can be found here.