Explanation from ACM Pubs of GENERAL TERMS

The best way to understand the General Terms is that they are orthogonal to the subject categories, that is, they cut across all subjects. The General Terms are supposed to tell you the perspective from which an article is written, not the subject. So, for example, an article about the subject of User Interfaces could be written from an EXPERIMENTAL perspective, or a THEORETICAL perspective, or from the perspective of its PERFORMANCE, or even of LEGAL ISSUES, and so on. The same could be said for an article on the subject of operating systems, or databases, or information retrieval, or data mining algorithms, and so on.

Clearly, some of the General Terms seem much closer to a particular subject, such as LEGAL ISSUES and K.5, but basically a General Term can be applied to many different subjects.

This section is limited to the following 16 terms and MUST be included on the first page of all submissions after the ACM Categories section, then as well chosen properly on the Proceedings or Publications's submission page: Algorithms, Design, Documentation, Economics, Experimentation, Human Factors, Languages, Legal Aspects, Management, Measurement, Performance, Reliability, Security, Standardization, Theory, Verification.

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