In "Open, Closed, or Cloven Access?," Moshe Y. Vardi, editor of Communications of the ACM, discusses the Association for Computing Machinery’s position on open access.

Here's an excerpt:

As for ACM's stand on the open-access issue, I'd describe it as "cloven," somewhere between open and closed. (In topology, a cloven set is one that is both open and closed.) ACM does charge a price for its publications, but this price is very reasonable. (If you do not believe me, ask your librarian.) ACM's modest publication revenues first go to cover ACM's publication costs that go beyond print costs to include the cost of online distribution and preservation, and then to support the rest of ACM activities. To me, this is a very important point. The "profits" do not go to some corporate owners; they are used to support the activities of the association, and the association is us, the readers, authors, reviewers, and editors of ACM publications. Furthermore, ACM operates as a democratic association. If you believe that ACM should change its publishing business model, then you should lobby for this position. . . .

Just remember, "free" is not a sound business model.

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