Online first: Evolving the ACM journal distribution program

Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) is presenting Online First, where articles can be published shortly after their acceptance by reviewers, authors, and editors, which means weeks or months before they will appear in the printed journal and even before the issue number and the true page numbers have been determined. Online first on an issue-by-issue basis is the first step in a transition to online first on an article-by-article basis, where issues themselves are accumulated in the DL on a regular basis. Each article published by ACM is now assigned a unique Digital Object Identifier (DOl), to enable ease of online access. DOIs are persistent identifiers that can be resolved to actual locations (URLs) by a resolution service. The benefits of Online First include simplification of article production, elimination of backlogs, and a clearer pathway to the future of online publishing.