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Right now there is a paper I'd like to read from a journal that I used to enjoy as a grad student, Software Practice & Experience. It's $38 dollars to download

by todd8 10y ago

Right now there is a paper I'd like to read from a journal that I used to enjoy as a grad student, Software Practice & Experience. It's $38 dollars to download a PDF of a 7 page article from 1991. It probably doesn't contain information that I need so I guess I'll skip it--too bad. I do want to point out to HN readers that an ACM professional membership costs around $100/year. I think this is a deal because for $100/year more you get access to essentially all of articles published in all of the very numerous past and present journals. Student memberships are much much cheaper. I have also had IEEE memberships to order to get access to their online library of IEEE publications. For some jobs, these memberships are worth it. All other journals, like Software Practice and Experience, are just too expensive for me to access on-line. Fortunately, some of these are available in large university library systems.

tzs 10y ago
"Software Practice and Experience" is available on Deepdyve.com, a service that is more obscure than it should be. A quick summary would be Spotify for journal articles. With a free account you can view articles online, but only for 5 minutes each (I'm not sure if that is 5 minutes once, or 5 minutes per day). That should be enough to let you determine whether or not that 7 page article you are interested in has the information that you need. If it does have the information you want, there are two options to purchase online access to the article without the 5 minute time limit. You can use an access token, which are sold in 5 packs for $20. Or you can purchase a subscription, with is $40/month ($30/month if you buy 12 months worth at once), which gives unlimited access to all the journal articles they have, and 20 pages per month for printing. If all you will ever need is that one particle, then Deepdyve is still expensive: it will cost you $20 for online access assuming you buy the access token pack and only use one token. But if you are going to need more articles now and then, then the access token approach works out to $4 per article. If you will need several a month, the subscription can be a good deal. Of course, open access would be better, but if what you want is not available that way, Deepdyve can be a good way to get articles without going broke in the process.

by todd8 10y ago

tzs 10y ago

"Software Practice and Experience" is available on Deepdyve.com, a service that is more obscure than it should be. A quick summary would be Spotify for journal articles. With a free account you can view articles online, but only for 5 minutes each (I'm not sure if that is 5 minutes once, or 5 minutes per day). That should be enough to let you determine whether or not that 7 page article you are interested in has the information that you need. If it does have the information you want, there are two options to purchase online access to the article without the 5 minute time limit. You can use an access token, which are sold in 5 packs for $20. Or you can purchase a subscription, with is $40/month ($30/month if you buy 12 months worth at once), which gives unlimited access to all the journal articles they have, and 20 pages per month for printing. If all you will ever need is that one particle, then Deepdyve is still expensive: it will cost you $20 for online access assuming you buy the access token pack and only use one token. But if you are going to need more articles now and then, then the access token approach works out to $4 per article. If you will need several a month, the subscription can be a good deal. Of course, open access would be better, but if what you want is not available that way, Deepdyve can be a good way to get articles without going broke in the process.