ACM Opens the Gates: Over 600,000 Computer Science Papers Now Free to Everyone
Something historic happened on January 1, 2026. The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), the world’s largest organization of computing professionals, flipped the switch on one of the most significant changes in academic publishing history. Every single article, conference paper, and research artifact in the ACM Digital Library is now completely free to access. No subscriptions. No paywalls. Just open knowledge for everyone. This isn’t a small collection we’re talking about. The ACM Digital Library houses over 600,000 full-text articles spanning decades of computer science research, from foundational algorithms to cutting-edge AI breakthroughs. If you’ve ever tried to access a research paper and hit a paywall asking for $25 or more for a single PDF, you understand why this matters. ...