SIGSAM is the ACM Special Interest Group in Symbolic and Algebraic Manipulation: https://www.sigsam.org/ .
This document, prepared by the SIGSAM board, in cooperation with ISSAC Steering Committee presents the challenges faced by SIGSAM and ISSAC together with a list of options that may be implemented for handling them.
The goal is to trigger an informed discussion within the SIGSAM and ISSAC communities, which will then be asked to answer a consultation on the option to follow, during the business meeting at ISSAC 2024 conference and online.
The discussion can happen in two types of forms:
SIGSAMs main recurring activities include:
Together with pointwise activities such as:
For many years SIGSAM operated in a cost-neutral relationship with the ACM (the money which SIGSAM notionally paid to ACM in overheads was exactly the money that ACM notionally paid SIGSAM for our contribution of papers to the ACM Digital Library). SIGSAMs other income (membership fees and conference reserves) was more often than not greater than its expenses leading to a sizeable reserve building up.
Following COVID-19, the ACM changed its model for SIGs, greatly increasing the overhead fees they must pay. SIGSAM now has to pay the ACM $15k a year. This has led to significant deficits in the 22/23 and 23/24 financial years already. SIGSAMs reserves have allowed this but it cannot continue forever. ACM budgeting process require us to maintain 50% of planned annual expenses: we may lose the ability to sponsor ISSAC in a couple of years. Taking no action is equivalent to allowing SIGSAM to go bankrupt.
Although this topic is distinct from the financial one discussed previously, it also deals with the evolution of the relationship between ISSAC, SIGSAM and ACM and we believe that both questions have to be considered simultaneously.
Since over 2 years, ACM is engaging in a major shift in its publication model: in order to make the whole of the ACM publications open-access, the financial model is moving from a Reader-Payer model to an Author-Payer model.
The transition is ongoing, several conferences having already moved, and will be complete by January 1st 2026, where all of ACM publications should comply to the ACM Open model.
ACM Open is a major change in ACM publication management which impacts our publication practices.
On one hand, it will make all of ACM publications freely available to everyone. On the other hand, the conditions at which one will be able to publish with ACM may be very diverse depending on one’s affiliation: while it will likely be acceptable for authors affiliated to an institution enrolled in ACM Open, the APC may become a strong barrier for those who are not.
The exact implications of this new policy for ISSAC are not clear yet since the list of the institutions who have signed the agreement with ACM is currently evolving (the current list is here, and here a more up-to-date list of French institutions). ACM says that the current list is only 60% of what they aim at. According to the current version of the list, and under some assumptions (e.g. CNRS covering a significant part of french faculty in university not registered to ACM Open), 80% of the papers of ISSAC’24 and ISSAC’23 would not be affected while 20% would have to pay APC.
See also
Most SIGs meet the financial burden of ACM overheads by making money from conference sponsorship. After examining all possibilities the SIGSAM committee concludes this is the only sensible way that SIGSAM could be maintained. However, it would need a change in the current relationship between ISSAC and SIGSAM.
Currently: ISSAC organisers have the option to either be sponsored by the ACM or in-cooperation with the ACM. The latter is a loose relationship to allow the proceedings to go in the Digital Library while the former is a tighter relationship with the ACM taking financial responsibility for the conference. SIGSAM only received money from ISSAC when the former relationship (sponsored by) is used. Further, when sponsored, SIGSAM usually takes a minimal amount of the revenue.
Option 1 would require ISSAC to always be sponsored by SIGSAM, and for a more significant chunk of each registration fee to support SIGSAM (e.g. $150).
This option maintains SIGSAM’s existence to run its activities autonomously. However, the tighter financial relationship with the ACM may put off some potential conference organisers or even rule ISSAC from being hosted in certain countries.
If SIGSAM can not meet the financial burden of ACM overheads, but the community still value being affiliated to ACM via a SIG, then a consolidation between SIGSAM and another SIG should be considered.
In practice, this means ending SIGSAM, and moving its current activities (such as ISSAC sponsorship, award sponsorship, editing Communication in Computer Algebra, etc) within another SIG.
Scientifically speaking, the closest SIG would be SIGACT, which principally gathers communities in Theoretical Computer Science in a broad sense, e.g. including computational number theory and algebra. Conferences such as STOC, SODA, SPAA, CCC, LICS, ANALCO have a non trivial intersection with our field.
The SIGSAM board has initiated a contact with the SIGACT board. SIGACT board was ready to consider a scenario where SIGSAM’s activities would be hosted by SIGACT. In particular, we asked to the SIG governing board for a financial projection of this merge scenario under the new overhead calculation framework. This project shows that the additional overhead that SIGACT would have to pay for hosting SIGSAM’s activity (mainly running ISSAC) would be covered (even with a slight extra benefit) by the additional Digital Library revenues brought by our community.
In this scenario, SIGSAM would become one among the several sub-communities of SIGACT, represented by SIGACT’s executive board (for which we could present candidates).
The SIGACT News has several thematic columns. This could be one option for the evolution of the Communications in Computer Algebra in this scenario.
This scenario also relies on the assumption that ISSAC is run in full sponsorship by the ACM. We have not discussed the option of running ISSAC in cooperation with in this context.
This option allows for the continued relationship between ACM and ISSAC.
See also:
If the community does not want to remain within ACM, a third option is to run all or part of SIGSAM’s activities outside of ACM.
For running ISSAC, this would correspond to running the conference as in the non-sponsored editions, except that the papers would need to be published by some other publisher.
Electronic publishers for Open Access research papers are available. Among them, the SIGSAM board has studied in detail the LIPICs option. Publishing with LIPICs is not free: the publication fees, about 10 times lower than ACM Open, are usually charged to the conference. A comparison of publishing services between LIPICs and ACM Open can be summarized as follows (see also Johnatan Aldrich (SGB Publication advisor) comparison):
The former activities of SIGSAM may be hosted within a non-profit organization created for the matter, in particular, for running a bank account absorbing the surplus and paying for deficits of the supported conferences like ISSAC.
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