9 ms·

ACM considered harmful

233 points by pietrofmaggi 16y ago

mahmud 16y ago
Computing progresses despite the ACM. Kent Pitman has a similar stance: http://www.nhplace.com/kent/PFAQ/acm.html http://www.nhplace.com/kent/PFAQ/acm.html
- erikpukinskis 16y ago
  Wow, the last one on that page is actually a recognized "Dark Pattern"¹: ACM used to routinely request certain kinds of "volunteered" contributions and/or subscriptions on my annual invoicing. They would do this by adding the things they wanted me to do (without my requesting it) and make me have to line out the items I didn't want. This is known as "Sneak Into Basket": http://wiki.darkpatterns.org/Sneak_into_basket http://wiki.darkpatterns.org/Sneak_into_basket If anyone has a copy of such an invoice (I've always thought "societies" were silly, never joined ACM when I was in grad school, and refused to join NHS on principle) they should throw a copy up on the Dark Patterns wiki. ¹ Racist nomenclature thumbs down
  - daeken 16y ago
    Do you really think that the term "dark pattern" has anything at all to do with race? Protip: associating everything with races is how racism continues; stop thinking about things in terms of races in general, and the world will be a far better place.
    - jdp23 16y ago
      Protip: ignoring examples of terms with unintentionally racist overtones and telling people not to bring it is often a characteristic of somebody with unexamined privilege and lack of understanding of racism. If you don't want people to think of you that way, avoid doing it. And when somebody else does, don't upvote them. EDIT: downvoted. What a surprise. People here sure don't like getting called on their privilege.
    - erikpukinskis 16y ago
      Something to do with it, yes. Everything to do with it, no.
  - sh4na 16y ago
    Ooh, Dark Pattern, that sounds awesome. Also, Dark = relative absence of light, or almost absence of light, but not quite. Also, in western philosophy and languages, Dark is equated to evil, as opposed to Light and non-evilness, that can be traced as far as the allegory of the cave, where shadows are illusions and reality is "above", "the light" that creates "the shadows". If the word "Dark" invokes a racist meaning for you, you might want to consider retraining yourself in language and philosophy, you're on the fast track to becoming racist - racist being someone who connects meanings of human discrimination based on physical traits to any word (that could relate to color, light, whatever) regardless of the context and original meaning of said words. You're discriminating those poor harmless words!
    - jdp23 16y ago
      If the word "Dark" invokes a racist meaning for somebody else, you might consider trying to understand why rather than attacking them. It's quite possible that ''you'' are the one who's on a fast track to being racist.
    - erikpukinskis 16y ago
      It's far too late for me, I'm already pretty racist.
  - msg 16y ago
    I agree we should stamp out racial prejudice everywhere it appears, like that well-known racist Mel Brooks and his Canadian caricature, Dark Helmet. Neo-colonialist interpretation: inside every big black man is a whiny white man who can't breathe in this thing. And let's not forget that closet bigot JK Rowling. Did you know the Dark Lord is really black? The movies got it all wrong. Or the League of Shadows in Batman Begins... it was called League of Assassins in the comic books, so we can blame the interpolating hand of director Christopher Nolan...
teraflop 16y ago
"The ACM, in common with other organizers, requires those who have papers published in its journals and conferences to sign over the copyright to them. This means that you can’t republish a paper elsewhere and that the ACM can charge for your writing without paying you any fee." Really? So every CS researcher who posts their publications on their personal site is flagrantly violating ACM's copyright with no consequences? I don't see how this can be accurate.
- mayank 16y ago
  You can generally post a user-generated version of your article for personal use on your personal server, not their typeset version. That usually means putting up the version that you submitted (in the generic Latex template), rather than the final version.
  - _delirium 16y ago
    For every ACM conference I've seen that's the same version, though; they just print the PDF I personally prepare and submit to them, with no editing except maybe a script that slaps a header or footer onto it.
- ghaff 16y ago
  The ACM grants back " The right to post author-prepared versions of the Work covered by the ACM copyright in a personal collection on their own home page, on a publicly accessible server of their employer and in a repository legally mandated by the agency funding the research on which the Work is based. Such posting is limited to noncommercial access and personal use by others, and must include the following notice both embedded within the full text file and in the accompanying citation display as well: ..."
  - jim_h 16y ago
    It doesn't seem fair. They charge a fee for others to read your article, but your rights to the same (your) article are limited to free access and only under limited circumstances.
jwr 16y ago
Oh, the number of times I've bouced off ACM's paywall. It's maddening to see an article that you think will let you make progress in a problem you're working on, but unable to access it because of the $15 fee. And paying the membership fees is not a solution, either — if you are an ACM member, you probably still need access to IEEE body of publications, and then there is Elsevier/Springer/others…
- foobarbazoo 16y ago
  If someone publishes via ACM, IEEE, or one of the other places papers go to die, it just ensures that their work will be unread, unused, and more or less ignored. Which is sad, because the individuals publish there in order to move up through the academic ranks. By moving forward in their careers, they are also marginalizing their own work. The incentives are perverse, and it will be a very happy day when all CS content is freely available online, as it should be.
  - ecuzzillo 16y ago
    This is not exactly true. Universities subscribe en masse to these things for presumably exorbitant fees, but the result is that everybody in the university has access and doesn't notice the evil in these institutions, and continues to publish in them. So what it ensures is that your work will be ignored by everyone outside the ivory tower, which is arguably worse, since it gives the impression that your work is important, when anybody who might actually do anything useful with it is screwed. Probably the one vector that work does have from the ivory tower to the real world is via people, when they transfer from one to the other, or have one foot in each side, and can transfer ideas and PDFs from the ivory tower to the real world, and can transfer motivations for new ideas from the real world to the ivory tower. Bridge-people like these are some of the most admirable people in academia, in my opinion, and also in my opinion produce by far the best papers. (I am therefore trying to be one of them, sort of, although I'm not really interested in actually writing papers, since to get it published (and therefore have it count officially as a 'paper' instead of a PDF talking about what you did) you have to write a variable amount of obfuscatory bullshit.)
  - jacquesm 16y ago
zdw 16y ago
(disclosure, I'm an ACM member, and a IEEE/Usenix/SAGE/LOPSA member as well) Professional organizations have trouble with their revenue models. The journal publishing business that the ACM and IEEE are in isn't sustainable long term, and drives people away or causes perverse benefit schemes, similar to how newspaper's business models fell apart in the last 10 years. A better method would be to focus on conferences and community, which is more of the way that Usenix and LOPSA work. That said, there's some solid stuff in the ACM journals, and their membership fees aren't all that crazy. I can't wait until the dead tree editions of their publications go away.
- mdwrigh2 16y ago
  I'm going to disagree - I love having the dead tree edition. I'm also a member (granted, at a student rate), but love having a physical copy of something to read when I don't feel like pulling out my laptop just to read some articles. Plus typically, if I pull out my laptop, I have work that needs to be done. Students are given the option of buying the print magazine though - I think they just need to extend this policy to everyone, rather than making it a print or nothing affair.
  - cyrus_ 16y ago
    Print out the articles you want to read. I don't know anyone who reads ACM proceedings and journals cover to cover, and it wastes a lot of resources.
    - mdwrigh2 16y ago
      And now you know someone who does read his monthly copy of CACM from cover to cover. And I pay extra for it (again, student pricing doesn't include physical copies -- something I think they should extend to professional members). So are you suggesting that I should have to print it out because people shouldn't be forced to pay for it? Or because I'm using some dead trees? Because if it's the second, there about a million more useful places you could recommend people cut down consumption, than on my monthly magazine with about 100 pages, that, again, I pay for.
jasonwatkinspdx 16y ago
Particularly now that much innovation in computing is happening in the developing world, the ACM's toll booth on reading the literature is especially repugnant. Digital distribution is not costly. The definitive online library for CS should be free to read. If wikipedia et all can support themselves then it would be trivial for the equivalent of the ACM library to do likewise. I do think it's reasonable for the ACM to charge for their other activities.
rlpb 16y ago
The ACM won't stop spamming me. "Your invitation to become a member", they say. Following the unsubscribe instructions doesn't work. Blocking the sending address doesn't work (they keep changing it). I've resorted to blacklisting *@acm.org. I'm not the only one, either: http://gmplib.org/~tege/acmspam.html http://gmplib.org/~tege/acmspam.html http://fries.net/~david/thoughts/ACM_membership_spam.php http://fries.net/~david/thoughts/ACM_membership_spam.php </rant>
- visural 16y ago
  I let my membership lapse a several years ago, and they're still sending me _snail mail spam_ to sign up again.
T_S_ 16y ago
Journals are priced for institutional libraries. They still don't know how to address the non-affiliated scholar market. While the industry evolves its business model we need to get stuff done. Here's a workaround: use Google Scholar. Look for the link that says "All X versions". Find the free pdf pre-print, usually from on the author's home page. Works at least 80% of the time for me. The OP is right though, this doesn't work so well for older pre-interwebs articles.
- sid0 16y ago
  It also doesn't work well for articles outside CS. Stab stab stab -- the journal model is hopelessly outdated in the digital age, and the sooner it disappears, the better.
  - T_S_ 16y ago
    I agree. I hope that more journals adopt the JMLR model. The university system is already paying for all the editors we need. No need to pay twice now that distribution costs are near zero.
br1 16y ago
You can now also rent ACM papers via DeepDyve. The first one is free, so if you want to stick it to the man, register yourname+a@gmail.com, yourname+b@gmail.com, yourname+c@gmail.com ...
gritzko 16y ago
From what I can say regarding CS conferences, ACM just rubberstamps and pockets the money. At one recent conference, the organizer addressed the concerns about high fees saying something like "well, most of it went to ACM, so we may hypothetically save on that, but we understand that the bulk of participants come from academia and they need the proceedings". Meanwhile, the "proceedings" are purely virtual, the same PDFs we submitted put online at ACM Digital Library. Bloodsuckers.
GrooveStomp 16y ago
Wow, this is a fairly condemning portrayal of the ACM. Thankfully, I've only once or twice bounced off of their paywall, and otherwise have been happily ignorant of their existence. [EDIT] Removed reference to article being anecdotal.
javert 16y ago
IEEE is, unfortunately, the exact same way.
- snth 16y ago
  At least they have standards bodies
wildmXranat 16y ago
After being a member as a student, I signed-up for the regular account. Couple years of using it proved that it wasn't worth it.
- mdwrigh2 16y ago
  I'm currently a student member, and the only reason I'm still subscribed is the print magazine copies. I could probably get them from the library, but having it show up on my doorstep every month is convenient. Plus, I believe I need to be a member for the ACM ICPC anyways.
  - oostevo 16y ago
    That wasn't true when I competed. I actually picked up a complimentary membership because I competed, if I remember correctly. My institution was ACM-affiliated, but I'm not sure that matters either.
    - mdwrigh2 16y ago
      Then it was the IEEExtreme competition that required IEEE membership. And my institution is ACM affiliated as well, and also paid for my entrance fee to the ACM. But now that I think about it, I believe you're right, I don't think the ICPC required it.
      - mzl 16y ago
        Actually, participants in a regional competition get a free ACM Student Lite membership.
jeffreymcmanus 16y ago
The author's problem is with the academic publishing industry (which all pretty much operates in the same manner), not the ACM. Because academic publishing is deeply intertwined with the process whereby professors are awarded promotions and tenure, there is very little impetus for reform here. It will take a generation or more for this problem to go away.
- rflrob 16y ago
  Fortunately (at least for me), biomedical research these days is largely an exception to this. Thanks to a Bush-era appropriations bill, anyone who takes NIH funding must ensure that their articles are published open-access on PubMedCentral within 12 months of the initial publication. It's not perfect, but it does at least solve the problem with old publications getting locked behind paywalls unreasonable to the value. We also have the PLoS series of journals, which are completely open access and Creative Commons "attribution" licensed.
  - blahblahblah 16y ago
    Agreed. This problem isn't ACM's fault. Professional societies are too dependent upon journal publishers to force significant change. It is Congress that needs to step in and demand that all journal articles produced as a result of any federally-funded research project (not just NIH-funded ones) be subject to the 1 year post-publication open access rule. If Congress does that, then the journals have no choice but to comply or else the authors who supply the content will publish elsewhere.
sedachv 16y ago
I had a similar thought this morning when I found out some academic journals charge their authors to publish articles: http://news.ycombinator.net/item?id=2135236 http://news.ycombinator.net/item?id=2135236
lanstein 16y ago
I love the link at the bottom to 'Goto Considered Harmful': http://www.u.arizona.edu/~rubinson/copyright_violations/ http://www.u.arizona.edu/~rubinson/copyright_violations/
rst 16y ago
The most important reason why the ACM's publishing model (and academic publishing generally) doesn't just dry up and blow away is that people on academic career tracks are judged by their publication record --- meaning publication in prestigious journals; putting the same text on a web site someplace doesn't count. So, if an academic doesn't let the ACM (or Elsevier, or someone else equally grabby) take control of their writing about their work, they effectively sacrifice a valuable career chit. Unfortunately, less expensive alternatives are going to be hard to bootstrap: a new, no-name journal almost by definition hasn't had the chance to establish prestige by publishing papers which go on to get widely cited. And if the idea is to do the same job while sucking less money out of people, that leaves very little cash for promotion, or to compensate "big names" that might lend credibility to the project...
- quanticle 16y ago
  Unfortunately, less expensive alternatives are going to be hard to bootstrap: a new, no-name journal almost by definition hasn't had the chance to establish prestige by publishing papers which go on to get widely cited. Well, it depends. If (and I admit that this is a huge if) you can get a couple of really big names to start publishing stuff in your new journal, you can bootstrap a journal pretty quickly. However, for this to happen, the big names that you're dealing have to be really, really disgusted with their current journal.
  - rst 16y ago
    Not just with their current journal (the big shots usually have a choice of venues), but with academic publishing in general. But of course, what makes someone a "big name" in academia is that they've succeeded well in the system as it is, and aren't likely to be deeply aggrieved with it.
moomba 16y ago
Whenever I see the paywall come up when browsing the internet, I get the sick feeling I've been redirected to some Ponzi Scheme. Charging $15 for a 10 year old paper can be thought of nothing other than ridiculous.
- jacquesm 16y ago
  It's the long tail of publishing. What is more interesting is what all the money they make like that ends up doing, where do the proceeds end up?
RKlophaus 16y ago
Grrrr... I can relate. Here's my ACM story: I presented at CUFP '10 a while back, which is associated with the ACM. Even though I was a speaker, they charged me full ticket price to get into the conference. When I balked at paying to speak, the representative replied: "Well, it's either buy a ticket or wait outside until right before your presentation, and then leave the room immediately after it." To cap it all off, the video of my presentation is now behind the members-only paywall. (http://bit.ly/fGjAaJ http://bit.ly/fGjAaJ)
- kenjackson 16y ago
  At most CS conferences (save some of the biggies like SigGraph, SuperComputing), at least half of the attendees are the presenters or co-authors. Those ticket prices are intended for you. It's not an accidental oversight. Their funding for the conference takes into account the speakers paying.
  - RKlophaus 16y ago
    Out of the 10 conferences I spoke at in 2010, they were the only conference who made speakers pay. Also, many of the conferences I attended covered the ticket price and subsidized part of the lodging and transportation for speakers. That said, all of the conferences I attended were very similar in size, sponsorship, subject matter, audience, and price, so this may just be a result of which conferences I attend. (In which case, I count myself as fortunate to find generous organizers.)
- jacquesm 16y ago
  That's completely bizarre. Hats of to you for speaking anyway, I would have been on the next available means of transportation back to my point of origin. Not that I'd ever be invited to speak at an ACM conference ;)
igrekel 16y ago
The 15$ per paper is expensive but the membership gives you access to all papers and is relatively inexpensive. If you need to access research material frequently, you are probably better off having a membership and an ieee membership as well. You employer may pay it for you or you may get tax deductions for these fees as well.
- jacques_chester 16y ago
  Membership does not give you access. You need to pay another fee on top of membership.
ahi 16y ago
For what it's worth, the executive director made 480k plus ~27k in benefits for FY ending 6/30/2009. Revenue breakdown: Conferences & Seminars: 23.25m Publications: 14.8m Membership Dues: 9.2m Advertising: 1m
- andrewcooke 16y ago
  480k? That seems a little excessive. Where are these numbers from?
  - ahi 16y ago
    Their 990, a form nonprofits have to file with the IRS. You can find them at guidestar.org. You can also walk into any nonprofit and request a copy of their most recent 990 no questions asked (well, no questions answered anyway).
    - andrewcooke 16y ago
      Thanks.
dzorz 16y ago
IEEE is much more expensive.
tomasr 16y ago
Maybe missing it, but strictly speaking as someone interested in reading (not publishing), I don't really see what the fuzz is. Been an ACM member for almost 10 years (started as a student member) and every single year I've been more than happy to renew my membership. Sure, would be nice if everything was free, but all the stuff ACM does cost money, and honestly, the fees aren't all that outrageous, and the digital library access itself is very much worth it. Rather like receiving Communications of the ACM every month (or close to it, anyway); I enjoy reading it and would totally forget about looking the articles online every month otherwise, so it's actually fairly convenient for me. Would much prefer that Queue had been kept around as a printed mag, though.
edw519 16y ago
annoying != harmful pet peeve != constructive criticism sensational title != worthy content
- mahmud 16y ago
  I accidentally upvoted this trite comment, but Ian Sommerville has earned the right to pen an "X Considered Harmful" article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_Sommerville_(academic) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_Sommerville_(academic) Ok, sure, we have all avoided his works because they're a pain to read, but he is someone you would expect to get along with the ACM as they needlessly peddled his and his peers' "methodologies". [Edit: Seriously, in the last few days I had to step in an introduce no less than Matt Welsh and Rob Pike to HN, now Sommerville. HN's aversion to book-learnin' is surely paying off.]
  - BrandonM 16y ago
    HN's ^recent aversion to book-learnin'
- jpr 16y ago
  1. Annoying things are harmful in the long run when you can't fix them. 2. There is really no need for constructive criticism when someone does something that is very clearly wrong. 3. Titles aren't content, duh.
- sh4na 16y ago
  three lines of not-equal signs != meaningful comment downvote parent == thanks!
rmobin 16y ago
I work at a company called DeepDyve; we work with publishers to provide alternative (cheaper) access models to their content. We have an online-only viewer and let you view articles for a limited amount of time (we call it a rental). If you are interested, please give it a shot and let me know how sufficient of an alternative it is. We currently allow 1 free rental (which will work for our ACM content), but we'll be adding free trials for our subscription plans instead very soon. http://www.deepdyve.com http://www.deepdyve.com http://www.deepdyve.com/browse/publishers/association-for-computing-machinery http://www.deepdyve.com/browse/publishers/association-for-co...
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
tmachinecharmer 16y ago
I love ArXiV :D
ffffruit 16y ago
Not entirely sure if this also applies to the CS domain (been quite a few years since I published a CS paper) but in the medical domain researchers are also presented with the option of publishing in an open access journal. For example, PLoS http://www.plos.org/ http://www.plos.org/
bcantrill 16y ago
So, some disclaimers: I sit on the ACM's Professions Board, and am a member of the CACM Editorial Board, where I sit on the board for the Practice section of CACM, also known as ACM Queue. That said, I speak only for myself here, not for ACM or the Professions Board or Queue Board. Disclaimers dispensed with, let me say that I personally sympathize with the complaints, especially with respect to the practitioner. The Digital Library (DL) is, in a word, overpriced with respect to the practitioner, and I believe that the ACM can both increase its membership base and better (and more broadly) monetize the DL by using it as more of a loss-leader with the practitioner. The good news is that the ACM is quite receptive to this at its highest levels, and I believe that the chances for reform (at least with respect to the practitioner) are very good. And indeed, this is the good news about ACM more broadly: the organization wants to change, especially with respect to the practitioner. One would be right to question this, but trust that I came to this conclusion only reluctantly and in the presence of overwhelming evidence -- a path that I outlined here: http://dtrace.org/blogs/bmc/2009/05/15/queue-cacm-and-the-rebirth-of-the-acm/ http://dtrace.org/blogs/bmc/2009/05/15/queue-cacm-and-the-re... I would repeat here my plea from that blog entry: the ACM has given practitioners a new voice, but we must engage with the ACM to use it. We must move beyond merely "considering the ACM harmful" and point to new models that work for our profession and its society. In short, the ACM is willing to follow, but we practitioners must light the way!
- heresy 16y ago
  Where "engaging with the ACM" means entering my credit card number into their website to access any content?
  - bcantrill 16y ago
    Were it only that simple! No, "engaging with the ACM" means becoming involved via either local chapters or with the national organization -- and it starts with becoming a member. If you're curious about other ways to get involved, I'm happy to offer ideas -- I can be reached at my HN user name at (naturally) acm.org.
- jacques_chester 16y ago
ylem 16y ago
I think the author of this piece misses a point. Let me take the example of the American Physical Society (APS). They have membership fees (required to go to their conferences) and journals which charge money for access. As with all academic publishing, you sign a copyright waiver (but you are allowed to post your article on your own homepage--also, for many of us, we initially publish things on arxiv.org in preliminary form (before peer review). So, you have two sources--the author if they choose to distribute it, and the arxiv for many papers (excepting breaking high profile papers that might appear in Science or Nature). Overall, the APS is relatively good--they provide much cheaper access rates to poorer institutions domestically (USA) and internationally. Now, you might wonder--what is the value added that publishers provide? Governments pay for the research, government sponsored researchers do most of the initial typesetting/editing, and government sponsored researchers do the peer review. The answer is that publishers: 1) Screen the papers to send out for peer review --there is a lot of noise in submissions. Is this paper interesting or not? Does it pass the "sniff" test on technical correctness? To do this first pass requires editors with domain level knowledge of the field--they can skim the article if they are not experts and guess about impact/sniff/etc. They are familiar with the reputations of researchers. Essentially these are people with at least a PhD in the field and this is not cheap. 2) Again, the editors are acquainted with potential reviewers in the field. They have amassed a database of people who are good reviewers. For example, referee A always critical? Is referee B always a softee? Does referee C respond in a timely fashion? Does referee D always have his reviews overturned on appeal to an additional referee? Etc. So, essentially, what you are paying for is screening out signal to noise. The first thing you might think of is, well, let the government step in. I think this would be very bad. Why? Because it would then be easy for the government to determine what gets published and what doesn't. Think climate change.... Next, you might think--ok, well what about open access? Again, the problem is that many open access journals (where the authors pay and the public reads for free) is that the prices to authors steadily increases and unless it is mandated, authors may seek other journals. Especially if the most prestigious journals are not open access.... Finally, you might ask, well, what about a technical solution? Hacker News for academic publishing, complete with automated tracking of referees, calculations of reputations based on citations, commenting, etc. But, then you'll bump into problems of avoiding winner take all and that for academic publishing, you want the comments and referee process to be deliberate and considered. What I would suggest is that for the computer science community to work harder on posting things to the arxiv before submitting to ACM journals and if that's not possible, then lobbying for journals to accept this. Then, for people who are ok with the rough version, they can access it and for people with need/resources, they can access the final, polished, piece. In the meantime, try writing the author if you need a paper. In the physics community, many authors are happy to send you a pdf file. One time there was a paper from an expensive publication that we didn't have access to that I wrote the author to request a copy from. He actually sent a reprint--from Japan!
dkarl 16y ago
But to access it, you need to login i.e. its not a resource for the profession but for members only. Old-style professional societies aspire to be synonymous with the profession, and they work toward that by adding value that everyone in the profession will want. Paying professional society dues is a normal thing in most professions. It isn't weird for the ACM to act this way; it's weird (or at least new) for people to want to work in a high-paying, technically specialized profession, not pay professional society dues, and still get all the benefits of a professional society. Hey, if you bring us that utopia, more power to you, but I don't see anything broken about the current model from an adult's point of view. Students and faculty get access through their university, and everyone else makes good enough money to pay ACM dues. The weak point is kids, who are excluded by the current system (which was never meant to work for kids) unless they live near a university.
- xiongchiamiov 16y ago
  It's also weird in most professions to work long and hard on something, only to give it away for free. I find that open-source advocates tend to be open-information advocates as well.
PaulHoule 16y ago
Personally, I'm bothered that the ACM is an organization for academic researchers and doesn't seem to give a damn about practitioners in the field. I quit my ACM membership when I got sick of continuous hand-wringing editorials asking "Why don't women want to study CS?" and "Why don't undergraduates want to study CS?" The ACM never seriously considers that undergrads who might study CS might know people who've chosen computing in a career and discovered that they hit a big glass ceiling in their 30's. If the ACM started to ask the question of "What happens to CS graduates?" and thinking about career paths in the profession, they might find that the answers for the problems that keep them up at night might come naturally.
deleted 16y ago
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mark_l_watson 16y ago
The author has good points but is probably being too harsh in criticism of the ACM. I have been a member on and off since the early 1970s and this has been a good value (at least I enjoy the journals more than the AAAI journals, the only other professional organization that I belong to). One thing: some years I subscribe to the portal but I didn't this year. The $100/year is too expensive for the benefits I get. Getting back to the article: authors not getting royalties and assigning copyright is fine since this is done by choice by the authors. However I do think that authors should get a dual copyright to be able to post their own articles on their own web sites. Also, the cost of articles for non-members should be much lower.
__bjoernd 16y ago
The article is not completely correct about the copyright thing. As an ACM author you at least retain the right to publish the paper on your web site. This is much better than say for instance IEEE paper copyright regulations.
duncanj 16y ago
For those who want to know, ACM membership with access to all their journals (digital library) is $198/year. From developing countries, it is less. Choosing Poland as a random example, digital library access is $100/year.
perlgeek 16y ago
FWIW this problem exists in many other branches of science too. I'm glad that APS now has an option that the author of a paper can pay a fee for the peer review, and in turn obtains the right to make a copy of the paper publicly available ("open access"). It sounds a bit backwards, but in practice it works out (at least if your employer pays the open access fees, as mine does). There are also peer reviewed Open Access journals, but mostly they don't have the same reputation and impact factors as the established ACM/APS/IEEE/whatever journals. Still http://www.doaj.org/ http://www.doaj.org/ is quite interesting.
jacoblyles 16y ago
Unfortunately the situation is far worse in other fields of knowledge. Nature magazine got in a big fight with the University of California last year when they tried to charge more than $1 million for the institution's subscription[1] (this for a journal written and refereed by volunteer labor), and the individual subscriptions are also outrageous. It costs a lot of money to be able to stay on the forefront of human knowledge, even though the producers of that knowledge don't see a red cent. [1]http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2010/06/university-of-california-conside.html http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2010/06/university...

233 points by pietrofmaggi 16y ago

Computing progresses despite the ACM. Kent Pitman has a similar stance: http://www.nhplace.com/kent/PFAQ/acm.html http://www.nhplace.com/kent/PFAQ/acm.html

erikpukinskis 16y ago
Wow, the last one on that page is actually a recognized "Dark Pattern"¹: ACM used to routinely request certain kinds of "volunteered" contributions and/or subscriptions on my annual invoicing. They would do this by adding the things they wanted me to do (without my requesting it) and make me have to line out the items I didn't want. This is known as "Sneak Into Basket": http://wiki.darkpatterns.org/Sneak_into_basket http://wiki.darkpatterns.org/Sneak_into_basket If anyone has a copy of such an invoice (I've always thought "societies" were silly, never joined ACM when I was in grad school, and refused to join NHS on principle) they should throw a copy up on the Dark Patterns wiki. ¹ Racist nomenclature thumbs down
- daeken 16y ago
  Do you really think that the term "dark pattern" has anything at all to do with race? Protip: associating everything with races is how racism continues; stop thinking about things in terms of races in general, and the world will be a far better place.
  - jdp23 16y ago
    Protip: ignoring examples of terms with unintentionally racist overtones and telling people not to bring it is often a characteristic of somebody with unexamined privilege and lack of understanding of racism. If you don't want people to think of you that way, avoid doing it. And when somebody else does, don't upvote them. EDIT: downvoted. What a surprise. People here sure don't like getting called on their privilege.
  - erikpukinskis 16y ago
    Something to do with it, yes. Everything to do with it, no.
- sh4na 16y ago
  Ooh, Dark Pattern, that sounds awesome. Also, Dark = relative absence of light, or almost absence of light, but not quite. Also, in western philosophy and languages, Dark is equated to evil, as opposed to Light and non-evilness, that can be traced as far as the allegory of the cave, where shadows are illusions and reality is "above", "the light" that creates "the shadows". If the word "Dark" invokes a racist meaning for you, you might want to consider retraining yourself in language and philosophy, you're on the fast track to becoming racist - racist being someone who connects meanings of human discrimination based on physical traits to any word (that could relate to color, light, whatever) regardless of the context and original meaning of said words. You're discriminating those poor harmless words!
  - jdp23 16y ago
    If the word "Dark" invokes a racist meaning for somebody else, you might consider trying to understand why rather than attacking them. It's quite possible that ''you'' are the one who's on a fast track to being racist.
  - erikpukinskis 16y ago
    It's far too late for me, I'm already pretty racist.
- msg 16y ago
  I agree we should stamp out racial prejudice everywhere it appears, like that well-known racist Mel Brooks and his Canadian caricature, Dark Helmet. Neo-colonialist interpretation: inside every big black man is a whiny white man who can't breathe in this thing. And let's not forget that closet bigot JK Rowling. Did you know the Dark Lord is really black? The movies got it all wrong. Or the League of Shadows in Batman Begins... it was called League of Assassins in the comic books, so we can blame the interpolating hand of director Christopher Nolan...

teraflop 16y ago

"The ACM, in common with other organizers, requires those who have papers published in its journals and conferences to sign over the copyright to them. This means that you can’t republish a paper elsewhere and that the ACM can charge for your writing without paying you any fee." Really? So every CS researcher who posts their publications on their personal site is flagrantly violating ACM's copyright with no consequences? I don't see how this can be accurate.

mayank 16y ago
You can generally post a user-generated version of your article for personal use on your personal server, not their typeset version. That usually means putting up the version that you submitted (in the generic Latex template), rather than the final version.
- _delirium 16y ago
  For every ACM conference I've seen that's the same version, though; they just print the PDF I personally prepare and submit to them, with no editing except maybe a script that slaps a header or footer onto it.
ghaff 16y ago
The ACM grants back " The right to post author-prepared versions of the Work covered by the ACM copyright in a personal collection on their own home page, on a publicly accessible server of their employer and in a repository legally mandated by the agency funding the research on which the Work is based. Such posting is limited to noncommercial access and personal use by others, and must include the following notice both embedded within the full text file and in the accompanying citation display as well: ..."
- jim_h 16y ago
  It doesn't seem fair. They charge a fee for others to read your article, but your rights to the same (your) article are limited to free access and only under limited circumstances.

jwr 16y ago

Oh, the number of times I've bouced off ACM's paywall. It's maddening to see an article that you think will let you make progress in a problem you're working on, but unable to access it because of the $15 fee. And paying the membership fees is not a solution, either — if you are an ACM member, you probably still need access to IEEE body of publications, and then there is Elsevier/Springer/others…

foobarbazoo 16y ago
If someone publishes via ACM, IEEE, or one of the other places papers go to die, it just ensures that their work will be unread, unused, and more or less ignored. Which is sad, because the individuals publish there in order to move up through the academic ranks. By moving forward in their careers, they are also marginalizing their own work. The incentives are perverse, and it will be a very happy day when all CS content is freely available online, as it should be.
- ecuzzillo 16y ago
  This is not exactly true. Universities subscribe en masse to these things for presumably exorbitant fees, but the result is that everybody in the university has access and doesn't notice the evil in these institutions, and continues to publish in them. So what it ensures is that your work will be ignored by everyone outside the ivory tower, which is arguably worse, since it gives the impression that your work is important, when anybody who might actually do anything useful with it is screwed. Probably the one vector that work does have from the ivory tower to the real world is via people, when they transfer from one to the other, or have one foot in each side, and can transfer ideas and PDFs from the ivory tower to the real world, and can transfer motivations for new ideas from the real world to the ivory tower. Bridge-people like these are some of the most admirable people in academia, in my opinion, and also in my opinion produce by far the best papers. (I am therefore trying to be one of them, sort of, although I'm not really interested in actually writing papers, since to get it published (and therefore have it count officially as a 'paper' instead of a PDF talking about what you did) you have to write a variable amount of obfuscatory bullshit.)
- jacquesm 16y ago

zdw 16y ago

(disclosure, I'm an ACM member, and a IEEE/Usenix/SAGE/LOPSA member as well) Professional organizations have trouble with their revenue models. The journal publishing business that the ACM and IEEE are in isn't sustainable long term, and drives people away or causes perverse benefit schemes, similar to how newspaper's business models fell apart in the last 10 years. A better method would be to focus on conferences and community, which is more of the way that Usenix and LOPSA work. That said, there's some solid stuff in the ACM journals, and their membership fees aren't all that crazy. I can't wait until the dead tree editions of their publications go away.

mdwrigh2 16y ago
I'm going to disagree - I love having the dead tree edition. I'm also a member (granted, at a student rate), but love having a physical copy of something to read when I don't feel like pulling out my laptop just to read some articles. Plus typically, if I pull out my laptop, I have work that needs to be done. Students are given the option of buying the print magazine though - I think they just need to extend this policy to everyone, rather than making it a print or nothing affair.
- cyrus_ 16y ago
  Print out the articles you want to read. I don't know anyone who reads ACM proceedings and journals cover to cover, and it wastes a lot of resources.
  - mdwrigh2 16y ago
    And now you know someone who does read his monthly copy of CACM from cover to cover. And I pay extra for it (again, student pricing doesn't include physical copies -- something I think they should extend to professional members). So are you suggesting that I should have to print it out because people shouldn't be forced to pay for it? Or because I'm using some dead trees? Because if it's the second, there about a million more useful places you could recommend people cut down consumption, than on my monthly magazine with about 100 pages, that, again, I pay for.

jasonwatkinspdx 16y ago

Particularly now that much innovation in computing is happening in the developing world, the ACM's toll booth on reading the literature is especially repugnant. Digital distribution is not costly. The definitive online library for CS should be free to read. If wikipedia et all can support themselves then it would be trivial for the equivalent of the ACM library to do likewise. I do think it's reasonable for the ACM to charge for their other activities.

rlpb 16y ago

The ACM won't stop spamming me. "Your invitation to become a member", they say. Following the unsubscribe instructions doesn't work. Blocking the sending address doesn't work (they keep changing it). I've resorted to blacklisting *@acm.org. I'm not the only one, either: http://gmplib.org/~tege/acmspam.html http://gmplib.org/~tege/acmspam.html http://fries.net/~david/thoughts/ACM_membership_spam.php http://fries.net/~david/thoughts/ACM_membership_spam.php </rant>

visural 16y ago
I let my membership lapse a several years ago, and they're still sending me _snail mail spam_ to sign up again.

T_S_ 16y ago

Journals are priced for institutional libraries. They still don't know how to address the non-affiliated scholar market. While the industry evolves its business model we need to get stuff done. Here's a workaround: use Google Scholar. Look for the link that says "All X versions". Find the free pdf pre-print, usually from on the author's home page. Works at least 80% of the time for me. The OP is right though, this doesn't work so well for older pre-interwebs articles.

sid0 16y ago
It also doesn't work well for articles outside CS. Stab stab stab -- the journal model is hopelessly outdated in the digital age, and the sooner it disappears, the better.
- T_S_ 16y ago
  I agree. I hope that more journals adopt the JMLR model. The university system is already paying for all the editors we need. No need to pay twice now that distribution costs are near zero.

br1 16y ago

You can now also rent ACM papers via DeepDyve. The first one is free, so if you want to stick it to the man, register yourname+a@gmail.com, yourname+b@gmail.com, yourname+c@gmail.com ...

gritzko 16y ago

From what I can say regarding CS conferences, ACM just rubberstamps and pockets the money. At one recent conference, the organizer addressed the concerns about high fees saying something like "well, most of it went to ACM, so we may hypothetically save on that, but we understand that the bulk of participants come from academia and they need the proceedings". Meanwhile, the "proceedings" are purely virtual, the same PDFs we submitted put online at ACM Digital Library. Bloodsuckers.

GrooveStomp 16y ago

Wow, this is a fairly condemning portrayal of the ACM. Thankfully, I've only once or twice bounced off of their paywall, and otherwise have been happily ignorant of their existence. [EDIT] Removed reference to article being anecdotal.

javert 16y ago

IEEE is, unfortunately, the exact same way.

snth 16y ago
At least they have standards bodies

wildmXranat 16y ago

After being a member as a student, I signed-up for the regular account. Couple years of using it proved that it wasn't worth it.

mdwrigh2 16y ago
I'm currently a student member, and the only reason I'm still subscribed is the print magazine copies. I could probably get them from the library, but having it show up on my doorstep every month is convenient. Plus, I believe I need to be a member for the ACM ICPC anyways.
- oostevo 16y ago
  That wasn't true when I competed. I actually picked up a complimentary membership because I competed, if I remember correctly. My institution was ACM-affiliated, but I'm not sure that matters either.
  - mdwrigh2 16y ago
    Then it was the IEEExtreme competition that required IEEE membership. And my institution is ACM affiliated as well, and also paid for my entrance fee to the ACM. But now that I think about it, I believe you're right, I don't think the ICPC required it.
    - mzl 16y ago
      Actually, participants in a regional competition get a free ACM Student Lite membership.

jeffreymcmanus 16y ago

The author's problem is with the academic publishing industry (which all pretty much operates in the same manner), not the ACM. Because academic publishing is deeply intertwined with the process whereby professors are awarded promotions and tenure, there is very little impetus for reform here. It will take a generation or more for this problem to go away.

rflrob 16y ago
Fortunately (at least for me), biomedical research these days is largely an exception to this. Thanks to a Bush-era appropriations bill, anyone who takes NIH funding must ensure that their articles are published open-access on PubMedCentral within 12 months of the initial publication. It's not perfect, but it does at least solve the problem with old publications getting locked behind paywalls unreasonable to the value. We also have the PLoS series of journals, which are completely open access and Creative Commons "attribution" licensed.
- blahblahblah 16y ago
  Agreed. This problem isn't ACM's fault. Professional societies are too dependent upon journal publishers to force significant change. It is Congress that needs to step in and demand that all journal articles produced as a result of any federally-funded research project (not just NIH-funded ones) be subject to the 1 year post-publication open access rule. If Congress does that, then the journals have no choice but to comply or else the authors who supply the content will publish elsewhere.

sedachv 16y ago

I had a similar thought this morning when I found out some academic journals charge their authors to publish articles: http://news.ycombinator.net/item?id=2135236 http://news.ycombinator.net/item?id=2135236

lanstein 16y ago

I love the link at the bottom to 'Goto Considered Harmful': http://www.u.arizona.edu/~rubinson/copyright_violations/ http://www.u.arizona.edu/~rubinson/copyright_violations/

rst 16y ago

The most important reason why the ACM's publishing model (and academic publishing generally) doesn't just dry up and blow away is that people on academic career tracks are judged by their publication record --- meaning publication in prestigious journals; putting the same text on a web site someplace doesn't count. So, if an academic doesn't let the ACM (or Elsevier, or someone else equally grabby) take control of their writing about their work, they effectively sacrifice a valuable career chit. Unfortunately, less expensive alternatives are going to be hard to bootstrap: a new, no-name journal almost by definition hasn't had the chance to establish prestige by publishing papers which go on to get widely cited. And if the idea is to do the same job while sucking less money out of people, that leaves very little cash for promotion, or to compensate "big names" that might lend credibility to the project...

quanticle 16y ago
Unfortunately, less expensive alternatives are going to be hard to bootstrap: a new, no-name journal almost by definition hasn't had the chance to establish prestige by publishing papers which go on to get widely cited. Well, it depends. If (and I admit that this is a huge if) you can get a couple of really big names to start publishing stuff in your new journal, you can bootstrap a journal pretty quickly. However, for this to happen, the big names that you're dealing have to be really, really disgusted with their current journal.
- rst 16y ago
  Not just with their current journal (the big shots usually have a choice of venues), but with academic publishing in general. But of course, what makes someone a "big name" in academia is that they've succeeded well in the system as it is, and aren't likely to be deeply aggrieved with it.

moomba 16y ago

Whenever I see the paywall come up when browsing the internet, I get the sick feeling I've been redirected to some Ponzi Scheme. Charging $15 for a 10 year old paper can be thought of nothing other than ridiculous.

jacquesm 16y ago
It's the long tail of publishing. What is more interesting is what all the money they make like that ends up doing, where do the proceeds end up?

RKlophaus 16y ago

Grrrr... I can relate. Here's my ACM story: I presented at CUFP '10 a while back, which is associated with the ACM. Even though I was a speaker, they charged me full ticket price to get into the conference. When I balked at paying to speak, the representative replied: "Well, it's either buy a ticket or wait outside until right before your presentation, and then leave the room immediately after it." To cap it all off, the video of my presentation is now behind the members-only paywall. (http://bit.ly/fGjAaJ http://bit.ly/fGjAaJ)

kenjackson 16y ago
At most CS conferences (save some of the biggies like SigGraph, SuperComputing), at least half of the attendees are the presenters or co-authors. Those ticket prices are intended for you. It's not an accidental oversight. Their funding for the conference takes into account the speakers paying.
- RKlophaus 16y ago
  Out of the 10 conferences I spoke at in 2010, they were the only conference who made speakers pay. Also, many of the conferences I attended covered the ticket price and subsidized part of the lodging and transportation for speakers. That said, all of the conferences I attended were very similar in size, sponsorship, subject matter, audience, and price, so this may just be a result of which conferences I attend. (In which case, I count myself as fortunate to find generous organizers.)
jacquesm 16y ago
That's completely bizarre. Hats of to you for speaking anyway, I would have been on the next available means of transportation back to my point of origin. Not that I'd ever be invited to speak at an ACM conference ;)

igrekel 16y ago

The 15$ per paper is expensive but the membership gives you access to all papers and is relatively inexpensive. If you need to access research material frequently, you are probably better off having a membership and an ieee membership as well. You employer may pay it for you or you may get tax deductions for these fees as well.

jacques_chester 16y ago
Membership does not give you access. You need to pay another fee on top of membership.

ahi 16y ago

For what it's worth, the executive director made 480k plus ~27k in benefits for FY ending 6/30/2009. Revenue breakdown: Conferences & Seminars: 23.25m Publications: 14.8m Membership Dues: 9.2m Advertising: 1m

andrewcooke 16y ago
480k? That seems a little excessive. Where are these numbers from?
- ahi 16y ago
  Their 990, a form nonprofits have to file with the IRS. You can find them at guidestar.org. You can also walk into any nonprofit and request a copy of their most recent 990 no questions asked (well, no questions answered anyway).
  - andrewcooke 16y ago
    Thanks.

dzorz 16y ago

IEEE is much more expensive.

tomasr 16y ago

Maybe missing it, but strictly speaking as someone interested in reading (not publishing), I don't really see what the fuzz is. Been an ACM member for almost 10 years (started as a student member) and every single year I've been more than happy to renew my membership. Sure, would be nice if everything was free, but all the stuff ACM does cost money, and honestly, the fees aren't all that outrageous, and the digital library access itself is very much worth it. Rather like receiving Communications of the ACM every month (or close to it, anyway); I enjoy reading it and would totally forget about looking the articles online every month otherwise, so it's actually fairly convenient for me. Would much prefer that Queue had been kept around as a printed mag, though.

edw519 16y ago

annoying != harmful pet peeve != constructive criticism sensational title != worthy content

mahmud 16y ago
I accidentally upvoted this trite comment, but Ian Sommerville has earned the right to pen an "X Considered Harmful" article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_Sommerville_(academic) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_Sommerville_(academic) Ok, sure, we have all avoided his works because they're a pain to read, but he is someone you would expect to get along with the ACM as they needlessly peddled his and his peers' "methodologies". [Edit: Seriously, in the last few days I had to step in an introduce no less than Matt Welsh and Rob Pike to HN, now Sommerville. HN's aversion to book-learnin' is surely paying off.]
- BrandonM 16y ago
  HN's ^recent aversion to book-learnin'
jpr 16y ago
1. Annoying things are harmful in the long run when you can't fix them. 2. There is really no need for constructive criticism when someone does something that is very clearly wrong. 3. Titles aren't content, duh.
sh4na 16y ago
three lines of not-equal signs != meaningful comment downvote parent == thanks!

rmobin 16y ago

I work at a company called DeepDyve; we work with publishers to provide alternative (cheaper) access models to their content. We have an online-only viewer and let you view articles for a limited amount of time (we call it a rental). If you are interested, please give it a shot and let me know how sufficient of an alternative it is. We currently allow 1 free rental (which will work for our ACM content), but we'll be adding free trials for our subscription plans instead very soon. http://www.deepdyve.com http://www.deepdyve.com http://www.deepdyve.com/browse/publishers/association-for-computing-machinery http://www.deepdyve.com/browse/publishers/association-for-co...

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]

tmachinecharmer 16y ago

I love ArXiV :D

ffffruit 16y ago

Not entirely sure if this also applies to the CS domain (been quite a few years since I published a CS paper) but in the medical domain researchers are also presented with the option of publishing in an open access journal. For example, PLoS http://www.plos.org/ http://www.plos.org/

bcantrill 16y ago

So, some disclaimers: I sit on the ACM's Professions Board, and am a member of the CACM Editorial Board, where I sit on the board for the Practice section of CACM, also known as ACM Queue. That said, I speak only for myself here, not for ACM or the Professions Board or Queue Board. Disclaimers dispensed with, let me say that I personally sympathize with the complaints, especially with respect to the practitioner. The Digital Library (DL) is, in a word, overpriced with respect to the practitioner, and I believe that the ACM can both increase its membership base and better (and more broadly) monetize the DL by using it as more of a loss-leader with the practitioner. The good news is that the ACM is quite receptive to this at its highest levels, and I believe that the chances for reform (at least with respect to the practitioner) are very good. And indeed, this is the good news about ACM more broadly: the organization wants to change, especially with respect to the practitioner. One would be right to question this, but trust that I came to this conclusion only reluctantly and in the presence of overwhelming evidence -- a path that I outlined here: http://dtrace.org/blogs/bmc/2009/05/15/queue-cacm-and-the-rebirth-of-the-acm/ http://dtrace.org/blogs/bmc/2009/05/15/queue-cacm-and-the-re... I would repeat here my plea from that blog entry: the ACM has given practitioners a new voice, but we must engage with the ACM to use it. We must move beyond merely "considering the ACM harmful" and point to new models that work for our profession and its society. In short, the ACM is willing to follow, but we practitioners must light the way!

heresy 16y ago
Where "engaging with the ACM" means entering my credit card number into their website to access any content?
- bcantrill 16y ago
  Were it only that simple! No, "engaging with the ACM" means becoming involved via either local chapters or with the national organization -- and it starts with becoming a member. If you're curious about other ways to get involved, I'm happy to offer ideas -- I can be reached at my HN user name at (naturally) acm.org.
jacques_chester 16y ago

ylem 16y ago

I think the author of this piece misses a point. Let me take the example of the American Physical Society (APS). They have membership fees (required to go to their conferences) and journals which charge money for access. As with all academic publishing, you sign a copyright waiver (but you are allowed to post your article on your own homepage--also, for many of us, we initially publish things on arxiv.org in preliminary form (before peer review). So, you have two sources--the author if they choose to distribute it, and the arxiv for many papers (excepting breaking high profile papers that might appear in Science or Nature). Overall, the APS is relatively good--they provide much cheaper access rates to poorer institutions domestically (USA) and internationally. Now, you might wonder--what is the value added that publishers provide? Governments pay for the research, government sponsored researchers do most of the initial typesetting/editing, and government sponsored researchers do the peer review. The answer is that publishers: 1) Screen the papers to send out for peer review --there is a lot of noise in submissions. Is this paper interesting or not? Does it pass the "sniff" test on technical correctness? To do this first pass requires editors with domain level knowledge of the field--they can skim the article if they are not experts and guess about impact/sniff/etc. They are familiar with the reputations of researchers. Essentially these are people with at least a PhD in the field and this is not cheap. 2) Again, the editors are acquainted with potential reviewers in the field. They have amassed a database of people who are good reviewers. For example, referee A always critical? Is referee B always a softee? Does referee C respond in a timely fashion? Does referee D always have his reviews overturned on appeal to an additional referee? Etc. So, essentially, what you are paying for is screening out signal to noise. The first thing you might think of is, well, let the government step in. I think this would be very bad. Why? Because it would then be easy for the government to determine what gets published and what doesn't. Think climate change.... Next, you might think--ok, well what about open access? Again, the problem is that many open access journals (where the authors pay and the public reads for free) is that the prices to authors steadily increases and unless it is mandated, authors may seek other journals. Especially if the most prestigious journals are not open access.... Finally, you might ask, well, what about a technical solution? Hacker News for academic publishing, complete with automated tracking of referees, calculations of reputations based on citations, commenting, etc. But, then you'll bump into problems of avoiding winner take all and that for academic publishing, you want the comments and referee process to be deliberate and considered. What I would suggest is that for the computer science community to work harder on posting things to the arxiv before submitting to ACM journals and if that's not possible, then lobbying for journals to accept this. Then, for people who are ok with the rough version, they can access it and for people with need/resources, they can access the final, polished, piece. In the meantime, try writing the author if you need a paper. In the physics community, many authors are happy to send you a pdf file. One time there was a paper from an expensive publication that we didn't have access to that I wrote the author to request a copy from. He actually sent a reprint--from Japan!

dkarl 16y ago

But to access it, you need to login i.e. its not a resource for the profession but for members only. Old-style professional societies aspire to be synonymous with the profession, and they work toward that by adding value that everyone in the profession will want. Paying professional society dues is a normal thing in most professions. It isn't weird for the ACM to act this way; it's weird (or at least new) for people to want to work in a high-paying, technically specialized profession, not pay professional society dues, and still get all the benefits of a professional society. Hey, if you bring us that utopia, more power to you, but I don't see anything broken about the current model from an adult's point of view. Students and faculty get access through their university, and everyone else makes good enough money to pay ACM dues. The weak point is kids, who are excluded by the current system (which was never meant to work for kids) unless they live near a university.

xiongchiamiov 16y ago
It's also weird in most professions to work long and hard on something, only to give it away for free. I find that open-source advocates tend to be open-information advocates as well.

PaulHoule 16y ago

Personally, I'm bothered that the ACM is an organization for academic researchers and doesn't seem to give a damn about practitioners in the field. I quit my ACM membership when I got sick of continuous hand-wringing editorials asking "Why don't women want to study CS?" and "Why don't undergraduates want to study CS?" The ACM never seriously considers that undergrads who might study CS might know people who've chosen computing in a career and discovered that they hit a big glass ceiling in their 30's. If the ACM started to ask the question of "What happens to CS graduates?" and thinking about career paths in the profession, they might find that the answers for the problems that keep them up at night might come naturally.

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]

mark_l_watson 16y ago

The author has good points but is probably being too harsh in criticism of the ACM. I have been a member on and off since the early 1970s and this has been a good value (at least I enjoy the journals more than the AAAI journals, the only other professional organization that I belong to). One thing: some years I subscribe to the portal but I didn't this year. The $100/year is too expensive for the benefits I get. Getting back to the article: authors not getting royalties and assigning copyright is fine since this is done by choice by the authors. However I do think that authors should get a dual copyright to be able to post their own articles on their own web sites. Also, the cost of articles for non-members should be much lower.

__bjoernd 16y ago

The article is not completely correct about the copyright thing. As an ACM author you at least retain the right to publish the paper on your web site. This is much better than say for instance IEEE paper copyright regulations.

duncanj 16y ago

For those who want to know, ACM membership with access to all their journals (digital library) is $198/year. From developing countries, it is less. Choosing Poland as a random example, digital library access is $100/year.

perlgeek 16y ago

FWIW this problem exists in many other branches of science too. I'm glad that APS now has an option that the author of a paper can pay a fee for the peer review, and in turn obtains the right to make a copy of the paper publicly available ("open access"). It sounds a bit backwards, but in practice it works out (at least if your employer pays the open access fees, as mine does). There are also peer reviewed Open Access journals, but mostly they don't have the same reputation and impact factors as the established ACM/APS/IEEE/whatever journals. Still http://www.doaj.org/ http://www.doaj.org/ is quite interesting.

jacoblyles 16y ago

Unfortunately the situation is far worse in other fields of knowledge. Nature magazine got in a big fight with the University of California last year when they tried to charge more than $1 million for the institution's subscription[1] (this for a journal written and refereed by volunteer labor), and the individual subscriptions are also outrageous. It costs a lot of money to be able to stay on the forefront of human knowledge, even though the producers of that knowledge don't see a red cent. [1]http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2010/06/university-of-california-conside.html http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2010/06/university...