CACM Research Highlights

SIGecom nominates papers from our community for consideration in the Research Highlights section of CACM. Details of the process are described below.

Communications of the ACM introduced a "Research Highlights" (RH) section in 2007. The aim of this section is to provide readers with a collection of outstanding research articles, selected from the broad spectrum of computing-research conferences. SIGecom is an approved nominating organization for the Research Highlights section. Our process for selecting articles to nominate to CACM's editors is described below.

To make it to RH, papers should go the extra mile that sets them apart from other strong results in their field. There are three main criteria for a good RH submission:

  1. Strong, novel research contribution;
  2. Of broad interest to the computing community;
  3. Ideally, readable by a broad audience (although work would not be precluded on this basis).

Conferences and Journals Covered

The committee plans to cover the following conferences and journals: ACM EC, WINE, ACM TEAC, Games and Economic Behavior, MOR, Econometrica.

Selection Process

The committee will ask the PC chairs of each of the above-mentioned conferences to make a selection of up to three top papers (ranked on both technical merit and breadth of interest to the CACM readership) and forward their selections within 2 months of the conference to the SIGecom Committee for CACM Nominations. The committee will review the submissions and forward an appropriate subset on to the CACM editors. Journal article suggestions and suggestions regarding papers from other conferences (e.g., STOC, FOCS, SODA, COLT, NeurIPS, etc.) can come from the community members.

The Committee (modulo people with conflicts of interest as discussed below) will discuss the candidate papers, both those provided by conference PC chairs and by community candidates (see below). The committee may solicit input from outside experts on the merits of any candidate papers. The committee will select for nomination to CACM those papers that will benefit from the broad exposure afforded by CACM, taking into consideration the technical quality of the result, the ability to summarize the results in an 8-page paper, and the likely interest from computer scientists in other areas. For each paper nominated, the committee will send to CACM: 1) a copy of the paper 2) a description of why the paper merits publication in CACM (1/2 page) 3) a list of possible people to write the Technical Perspective (i.e., experts in the field, often senior members of the community), 4) consent to the nomination from the authors and prospective technical perspective writers.

Community Candidates

Community members may ask for papers to be considered by submitting to the committee a nominating proposal. Such a proposal will be evaluated following the process described above.

Authors may not self-nominate.

Although the committee will fill out the nomination form, community members are asked to take a look at the required fields before proposing a paper for nomination.

The TP (Technical Perspective) is the one-page document that precedes the paper on CACM and introduces it to the readership. Community members who propose a paper for nomination are asked to suggest 3 potential TP authors for each proposed paper. TP authors are usually experts in the field and relatively senior. The committee will be happy to receive a list that has some diversity.

The proposal form can be found here.

Conflicts of Interest

CACM RH Committee members and PC chairs may not nominate their own papers for consideration. CACM RH Committee members may not participate in the discussion of whether one of their papers may be nominated to CACM. Other conflicts of interest should be disclosed to the committee, who will decide how to handle such conflicts. A committee member must recuse him or herself from the discussion of any paper with an appearance of conflict of interest (includes students/supervisors, close colleagues and recent co-authors). Papers by committee members may be nominated by the PC Chair or community-nomination process.