The ACM Professional Knowledge Program offers working professionals a means to attain a standard level of reading knowledge about important, hot topics in computing.

ACM will award a certificate to those who complete a reading program and respond satisfactorily to questions about the material.

PKPs are complete, self-contained packages on the World Wide Web. Each program contains the following:
Editor's overview of the field including key people and critical events, emerging trends and rationale for including the particular items in the PKP.

Historical flow of the field illustrated by a time-line.

Articles selected by the editors in two parts:

  1. Primary articles (usually 10-15)
  2. Supplemental articles
Editor's overview of each primary article which relates article to main themes in the overview and shows how the article contributes to the bigger picture. In addition, this section may have some biographical information about the author and may mention the big concerns of the field at the time the author wrote the article. There is a discussion of the author's main claims and additional relevant anecdotes as well as mention of what has happened since the publication.

Digital versions of all primary articles including copyrights and permission notices and CREV reviews if available.

Search engine to assist in finding words and phrases in the articles.

PKP Certifier for the material contained in the PKP.


© 1997 Association for Computing Machinery