The informal guide to ACM fellow nominations: Recommendations for a successful nomination process

The ACM Fellows Program has shown excellence in technical, professional, and leadership contributions. The success of a nomination depends first and foremost on the quality of the candidate. The nominator writes the nomination and selects the endorsers. The endorsers then submit their endorsements. The candidate is best placed to provide accurate information on her achievements and for selecting plausible endorsers. A candidate may want to write her own nomination; such a write-up could be a useful draft, but should not be the final nomination. For one thing, the nomination is supposed to be contributed by the nominator and express his views, not the views of the candidate. ACM requires five years of continuous membership. The large majority of the successful candidates are selected mostly on the strength of their scientific and technical contributions. While the candidate's advice is important in selecting the endorsers, it is better that the endorsers be approached by the nominator. Fellows are selected for their actual accomplishments, not for their potential accomplishments in the future.