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Open access to ACM Digital Library during coronavirus pandemic
- cs702 7y agoThe income from the ACM/IEEE's investment portfolio is large enough that it could fund all of arXiv.org's annual expenses ~20 times over, in perpetuity, without dipping into capital. See this thread for details: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22103763 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22103763
- convolvatron 7y agoif you make this permanent I'd be happy to start paying my dues again
- mindcrime 7y agoSame here.
- mr337 7y agoSame here as well!
- alharith 7y agoI know this place discourages this sort of thing, but really want to make this emphasized in case anyone from the ACM is reading: same here x3!
- sitkack 7y agoAs someone with a corporate account and a scihub user, I want to declare the same (this isn't new). Open access to civilization's research is the is how a mature civilization should behave. I would gladly start paying ACM dues again if they kept this access open.
- EamonnMR 7y agoSeconded. I loved having access to this as a student and would love other curious people to be able to get at these papers.
- chrisxcross 7y agoIt should be Open Access all the time. Keep the change!
- alharith 7y agoAlright, someone tell me what are some must downloads? I've been out of college for a while so haven't kept up. edit: I am most interested in models of computing, and more recently ML-family of languages, and the theories behind it. I am also generally interested in those papers that people view as "classics" or serve as computing history. Hoares CSP, or most anything by Dijkstra that may not be public already.
- kick 7y agoWhat are you interested in? The recommendations I can make for someone fascinated with LISP are different than the ones I can make for someone interested in computing history are different than the ones I can make for someone interested in processor design and so on. There's a very wide selection here.
- ntietz 7y agoI'm not the GP but I'd be super interested in any computing history recommendations.
- kick 7y agoThere was a decent response from someone else elsewhere in this thread that I'd recommend.
- tosh 7y agoI'll take the "fascinated with LISP" ones :)
- kick 7y agoThis should get you started; just some links I had laying around: Connection Machine Lisp: fine-grained parallel symbolic processing; Steele, Hillis https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/319838.319870 https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/319838.319870 I'm biased because this one is effectively "What if we make an APL Lisp?" Design of a LISP-based microprocessor; Steele, Sussman https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/359024.359031 https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/359024.359031 This one is one of the hundreds that came out of the Mead/Conway book. Basically, it's a LISP-based VLSI chip. Turtles and defense; Sobalvarro, Klotz https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/1056602.1056608 https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/1056602.1056608 As 'donhopkins put it: It was Leigh Klotz's sarcastic response to a Defense Department questionnaire to Terrapin about how their technology could be used to kill people. He proposed deploying a swarm of thousands of LOGO turtles to crawl around the battlefield in mesmerizing geometric patterns, and stab the enemy with a quick succession of PENUP and PENDOWN commands (proving once again that the pen is mightier than the sword). (For more information: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=klotz%20leigh&sort=byPopularity&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... )
- mkchoi212 7y agoThis is awesome! Great decision by the folks at ACM! well done guys!!
- justin66 7y agoAt first glance this appears to include everything including conference proceedings, which makes it better than the access I had when I was in graduate school and better than I have currently as a standard ACM member. I hope I'm correct about that.
- chrisseaton 7y ago> better than the access I had when I was in graduate school How did you function as a graduate student without access to conference proceedings? > better than I have currently as a standard ACM member I think that's only if you de-select the option for the library, which people often do if they have institutional access (which will be almost all academic and industrial researchers I guess.)
- justin66 7y ago> How did you function as a graduate student without access to conference proceedings? I don't remember too many instances where a paper I wanted could not be found (read into that whatever you like), but I do remember hitting some annoying limits in my institution's access. > I think that's only if you de-select the option for the library, which people often do if they have institutional access (which will be almost all academic and industrial researchers I guess.) I only recently signed up., but I think it's possible we're not talking about the same thing. If my base level membership has access to all conference proceedings without additional charge - which seems to be what your comment is implying - it's a pleasant surprise.
- pinewurst 7y agoI'm really hoping they'll open IEEE journals as well.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- cordite 7y agoNow their fancy js pages don't load
- dedosk 7y agoDo you have any tip for android app that can provide some enhanced experience reading the pdf articles (like from ACM?) on Android mobile phone? I don't mean generic PDF reader for Android. I'm looking for something that provides similar user experience like Firefox's "reader view". Is there something like that?
- warvair 7y ago"... if that really is your name."
- nimish 7y agoThere was never a reason this wasn't open access, except to hoard information. Someone archive this and make it free forever.
- acd 7y agoIf you would like please consider becoming a professional member $99/year of ACM then you also get access to Safaribooksonline. Personally I think its good value for money. https://www.acm.org/membership/membership-options https://www.acm.org/membership/membership-options
- packetslave 7y agoIIRC (admittedly it's been a few years), ACM Membership only got you access to a selection of material from Safari, not the whole thing. That might have changed given that Safari has reorganized and changed like 5x in the past few years. Anyone confirm?
- wbsun 7y agoLast year, I explicitly checked with Safari customer service about this, told them this is too good to be true since a regular Safari membership costs 3x of the ACM membership. The customer service replied and confirmed there is nothing different. So go for it :) The basic ACM membership is really a good deal.
- lstamour 7y agoCan also confirm it’s the full library, you just sign in via SSO. Happy to support the ACM too.
- asdefghyk 7y agoRE - you also get access to Safaribooksonline when I checked this out a few years ago it was a subset of you also get access to Safaribooksonline - about 600 books only. Maybe it has changed now....
- guiambros 7y agoI have been a subscriber for 3 years, and can confirm it's the full SafariOnline subscription, on top of ACM Magazine (your choice or paper or electronic format), plus ACM DL Library. Yes, it seems too good to be true. But it is real, and I am happy to support both services.
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- a3_nm 7y agoPart of me can't help but suspect that they are also doing this because, believe it or not, many computer science researchers don't know that these paywalls exist, because they are subscribed through their university. Now that they are stuck at home, these researchers could start noticing how inconvenient and ridiculous these paywalls are, given that they are the ones who write and typeset the papers and review the research for free. So it may be a smart move for ACM to avoid making researchers aware of paywalls, and continuing to drag this outdated publication model for a few more years... (If I'm not mistaken, most subscription money comes from universities, which subscribe annually, and there's very little revenue from individual downloads, so most likely this measure isn't actually costing ACM much in terms of revenue.)
- aglionby 7y agoIt's true (at least in my experience) that the paywall is transparently dealt with when connecting from a university network, but most sites make it pretty easy to access their content via your institutional login even if you're not.
- EamonnMR 7y agoCheck out the HOPL conferences, they're really fascinating. I'll post a link if I can find an index of them.
- EamonnMR 7y agohttps://dl.acm.org/action/doSearch?AllField=HOPL&startPage=&LimitedContentGroupKey=10.1145%2F154766 https://dl.acm.org/action/doSearch?AllField=HOPL&startPage=&...
- seanmcdirmid 7y agoUnfortunately, HOPL 4 has been postponed because of the virus, but that will be a hoot, with Rich Hickey, Don Syme, Dan Ingalls, Robert Harper, Brendan Eich, Walter Bright, Bjarne Stroustrup....
- Phelinofist 7y ago"Your IP Address has been blocked - Please contact dl-support@acm.org" :( After just 100 DLs. Does anyone know whether I really have to write a mail or will the block get lifted after x hours?
- cjensen 7y agoThey gave you access to read... not to download and read later. So no shock you got blocked. IMHO as a life-long ACM member... library access should be permanently free. But that's clearly not what they have chosen to do.
- nerpderp82 7y agoHell, I used to get blocked just for opening 8 papers in new tabs. Getting blocked after a 100 paper bender is pretty good luck!
- emayljames 7y agoCough VPN. Blocked again? New VPN location, and so forth.
- Phelinofist 7y agoI've been unblocked in the meantime - guess I'll use the VPN option later.
- rbanffy 7y agoCan we shame the IEEE and their Computer Society into doing the same?
- rbanffy 7y agohttps://twitter.com/ComputerSociety/status/1245114551672213506?s=19 https://twitter.com/ComputerSociety/status/12451145516722135...
- robomartin 7y agoI wrote a paper for an ACM conference back in the early 80's. It has existed behind a paywall ever since. I fail to see how this is aligned with the concept of sharing science...when an organization takes ownership of papers just because they happen to put on a conference. In my opinion, the same applies to IEEE and other organizations. And this, again, my opinion, is particularly true of taxpayer-funded university research that ends-up behind paywalls.
- seanmcdirmid 7y agoYou can usually get away with putting out a preprint in public (basically the paper slightly modified), and anything really good is often duplicated elsewhere. There are some gems behind the digital library paywall, but google scholar is really good at sniffing out free links. At any rate, I totally agree that the Digital Library should be a force for good and only openness can accomplish that goal. Most new papers are openly available (authors have to pay more, however), but that isn't good enough.
- carldaddy 7y agoIs ACM membership useful for just typical developers not in research or grad school?
- alharith 7y agoDon't call yourself a typical developer and read up!
- kabdib 7y agoI joined the ACM in college. I found the library pretty useful as a "typical developer" and took good advantage of the free access that my employers provided. I paid for ACM library access out of my own pocket when I left for a smaller company, but let it lapse a couple years ago when I realized that most of the papers I was reading were also available elsewhere, and that the journals I was following no longer had as many compelling papers. (Reading papers on a regular basis is something that I encourage developers and managers to do; it's a good way to expand your toolkit and get ideas for different ways to solve things. A paper a week -- maybe an hour a week, on average -- and that's like fifty new things you've been exposed to in a year. These add up, and eventually can make a big difference in how you approach problems).
- convolvatron 7y agoyes. depends what you are working on. if I need an on-disk range search structure its pretty irreplaceably valuable to be able to do a literature search and catch up to decades worth of thought on the topic. I'm not going to do nearly as well with just a whiteboard marker and some coffee. lock free data structures. static analysis. solvers for systems of equations. cache maintenance techniques. concurrency control. etc. most jobs though don't afford the latitude/scope for you to be looking into details like that in the first place.
- bubblethink 7y agoBtw, ACM has started adding some drm banner (rightslink) to the papers. This seems like a recent addition. Why do these bodies (ACM/IEEE) exist ? I get the journal prestige angle and the loop that is hard to break, but for CS, most of it is conference driven. Any sub-field has about 50 people who call the shots. Why don't these 50 people decide not to be associated with ACM/IEEE ? What's in it for them ? Is it just apathy ? For example, the PC of a top conference (say ISCA) could just fork it for next year onwards (say to SCA) and remove the affiliation with ACM/IEEE. Since the sub-fields are quite small, there isn't a huge risk of loss of prestige or dilution. You follow where the PC goes. In general, the community decides that there are 3-4 top conferences in the area. Once you migrate those 3-4, you have taken back control. csrankings.org does a reasonable job of capturing the top conferences in every area. If you are on the PC of any of these conferences, I would like to know why this hasn't happened yet. Fortunately, some of the top ones (usenix ones, vldb, nips, etc.) are open access, and we should have all of them migrate.
- thr0w__4w4y 7y agoThis is great news, and a kind gesture of the ACM. I used to be a member, fell off years ago, but this might inspire me to re-join. I'd been thinking membership was >= $199, maybe it used to be? but now @ $99 it seems worthwhile. Total unrelated aside: it's funny that the name of the person making this announcement has a name which is essentially two foods ("Cherri Pancake"). Then again, I had a classmate in primary school whose name was Candy Kane (well, Candice, but yes she went by "Candy" in 4th grade).