5 ms·

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

by 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
  What bothers me most is that plenty of the research is funded with public money and then ends up behind paywalls of commercial organizations.
- scott_s 16y ago
  Most authors who publish in ACM and IEEE venues also put copies on their own homepage. You can see an example of this by looking in my profile. I agree there is something wrong with the model, but I think your understanding of academia is flawed.
ecuzzillo 16y ago
I have access to probably everything you want through a university VPN; if you really want a given paper, email me a link to it and I'll email back the PDF. I can't scale this solution, but I figure I'll do what I can.
- Jach 16y ago
  I have a professor who does the same with me, it's really nice.
cscotta 16y ago
"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..." Enough progress to justify spending $15 (less than the price of dinner downtown)? I agree, many find the revenue models / cost structures of professional organizations outmoded. However, I find this rather harsh aversion to paying a few bucks for peer-reviewed, scientific content curious. If it's of any help to you, many public universities, schools, and local libraries provide full access to ACM content, often both on-site and off. The most common method of providing access to this is via EBSCO's "Business Source Premier" database. I frequently read ACM articles from my desk via the web; a quick title search in EBSCO will pull up the title in about 20 seconds, and I can download a PDF of about any article published since 1965 to send to coworkers. That said, if price is an issue, please check with your local library. Odds are good that your tax dollars are already paying the cost for you to read these articles from the comfort of your home or office. This isn't just true for the ACM -- even in the age of paywalls, your library's probably been quietly working to provide digital access to all of this for the past decade.
- jacquesm 16y ago
  I'd gladly pay the author of the paper, the ACM not so much.
  - repsilat 16y ago
    If you know the article you want to read and immediacy isn't a concern you can probably look the authors up and send them an email. Many would be happy to send you a pdf.
    - petercooper 16y ago
      I've frequently Googled paper names from ACM and found that the author has put them on their own site as direct downloads. So, yes, I definitely second you but.. check their site first before you e-mail them too ;-)
    - deleted 16y ago
      [deleted]
russell 16y ago
As I said in a comment yesterday, go to the author's web site or to his/her university/lab/corp. There is usually a prepublication or slightly different version.
__bjoernd 16y ago
And how about just googling the paper's title and finding the author version freely available?
mreid 16y ago
What's worse is that the papers ACM charge for via their Portal site are often papers you can get (legally) for free elsewhere. For example, there is an ACM Portal page ( http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1553489 http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1553489 ) for a paper I wrote that is freely available from the conference site ( http://machinelearning.org/archive/icml2009/abstracts.html http://machinelearning.org/archive/icml2009/abstracts.html ). There is no indication on the ACM page (the DOI on that page just returns the ACM page) that this content is available elsewhere without the $15 fee. It's bordering on unscrupulous in my opinion.
- jonhendry 16y ago
  It's not their obligation to track down cheaper or free sources. That's silly. After all, the ACM isn't going to waste time keeping track of the various sources of every paper they publish. It's not their job. If someone is motivated by the fee to find another source, they'll do so. Maybe they'll ask their colleagues. Maybe they'll search the web. Maybe they'll take the time to visit a university library and track down a print copy. But if they don't care about the price, they'll just do the easiest thing and pay the ACM in order to save time. It's not the ACM's job to do the legwork. If you want to save the money, you have to do the work yourself.
- epc 16y ago
  Who do you think should pay for the servers, maintenance & upkeep of the ACM site? It's a non-profit organization supported (barely in some years) by membership dues.

by jwr 16y ago

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
What bothers me most is that plenty of the research is funded with public money and then ends up behind paywalls of commercial organizations.
scott_s 16y ago
Most authors who publish in ACM and IEEE venues also put copies on their own homepage. You can see an example of this by looking in my profile. I agree there is something wrong with the model, but I think your understanding of academia is flawed.

ecuzzillo 16y ago

I have access to probably everything you want through a university VPN; if you really want a given paper, email me a link to it and I'll email back the PDF. I can't scale this solution, but I figure I'll do what I can.

Jach 16y ago
I have a professor who does the same with me, it's really nice.

cscotta 16y ago

"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..." Enough progress to justify spending $15 (less than the price of dinner downtown)? I agree, many find the revenue models / cost structures of professional organizations outmoded. However, I find this rather harsh aversion to paying a few bucks for peer-reviewed, scientific content curious. If it's of any help to you, many public universities, schools, and local libraries provide full access to ACM content, often both on-site and off. The most common method of providing access to this is via EBSCO's "Business Source Premier" database. I frequently read ACM articles from my desk via the web; a quick title search in EBSCO will pull up the title in about 20 seconds, and I can download a PDF of about any article published since 1965 to send to coworkers. That said, if price is an issue, please check with your local library. Odds are good that your tax dollars are already paying the cost for you to read these articles from the comfort of your home or office. This isn't just true for the ACM -- even in the age of paywalls, your library's probably been quietly working to provide digital access to all of this for the past decade.

jacquesm 16y ago
I'd gladly pay the author of the paper, the ACM not so much.
- repsilat 16y ago
  If you know the article you want to read and immediacy isn't a concern you can probably look the authors up and send them an email. Many would be happy to send you a pdf.
  - petercooper 16y ago
    I've frequently Googled paper names from ACM and found that the author has put them on their own site as direct downloads. So, yes, I definitely second you but.. check their site first before you e-mail them too ;-)
  - deleted 16y ago
    [deleted]

russell 16y ago

As I said in a comment yesterday, go to the author's web site or to his/her university/lab/corp. There is usually a prepublication or slightly different version.

__bjoernd 16y ago

And how about just googling the paper's title and finding the author version freely available?

mreid 16y ago

What's worse is that the papers ACM charge for via their Portal site are often papers you can get (legally) for free elsewhere. For example, there is an ACM Portal page ( http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1553489 http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1553489 ) for a paper I wrote that is freely available from the conference site ( http://machinelearning.org/archive/icml2009/abstracts.html http://machinelearning.org/archive/icml2009/abstracts.html ). There is no indication on the ACM page (the DOI on that page just returns the ACM page) that this content is available elsewhere without the $15 fee. It's bordering on unscrupulous in my opinion.

jonhendry 16y ago
It's not their obligation to track down cheaper or free sources. That's silly. After all, the ACM isn't going to waste time keeping track of the various sources of every paper they publish. It's not their job. If someone is motivated by the fee to find another source, they'll do so. Maybe they'll ask their colleagues. Maybe they'll search the web. Maybe they'll take the time to visit a university library and track down a print copy. But if they don't care about the price, they'll just do the easiest thing and pay the ACM in order to save time. It's not the ACM's job to do the legwork. If you want to save the money, you have to do the work yourself.
epc 16y ago
Who do you think should pay for the servers, maintenance & upkeep of the ACM site? It's a non-profit organization supported (barely in some years) by membership dues.