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Leaving aside for-profit publishers, I dont' get what the point of ACM and IEEE is. Those are non-profit bodies and dominate the majority of publishing in CS/EE

Leaving aside for-profit publishers, I dont' get what the point of ACM and IEEE is. Those are non-profit bodies and dominate the majority of publishing in CS/EE. Aside from a handful of big venues like NIPS, VLDB, Usenix, almost everything is tied to ACM/IEEE. Why do we need them and what value do they add ? Also, what is a non-profit ? You can keep pumping all the money you make into salaries and other assets that you own. Is that all it takes to be a non-profit?

shrewduser 5y ago
i've often wondered this myself... non profits with ludicrous executive salaries...
anon946 5y ago
I can't say whether or not they are worth it, but they provide some degree of branding, mainly to "adjacent" communities. If I see a paper in IEEE something, I have some degree of assurance that there is a minimum quality level, even if I'm not that familiar with the area. Also, at least for IEEE, they provide some help with running the conference, publishing the proceedings, etc. Whether or not they provide value commensurate with their cost is a separate question.
- bubblethink 5y ago
  This is a bit like the app store scenario. Sure, if you are a lesser known conference, having ACM/IEEE probably helps you. It really doesn't help any established conference similar to how the Apple store doesn't help Netflix.
lazyjeff 5y ago
These societies are run and composed of by academics themselves. In fact, the executive salaries are $0 as far as I know, so it's a volunteer organization. It's basically how publishing would work if academics take control away from commercial publishers, i.e. the post-disruption publishing arrangement that people in this thread are cheering for. Authors generally have the option to keep the copyright of the papers when publishing for ACM, and at least host the papers on their homepages. This is a good thing that they dominate CS/EE as they have more reasonable access costs, and many academics no longer have to publish at commercial publishers. It's not completely free because there are real costs to publishing, but it's the best option I can think of for now.
- bubblethink 5y ago
  >the executive salaries are $0 as far as I know I have no way of verifying this, but clearly the money is going somewhere and it's not publishing. >It's basically how publishing would work if academics take control away from commercial publishers arxiv is closer to how publishing would or should work if academics were entirely in charge. Publishing only entails putting a pdf up. All the peer review process is orthogonal which is done for free by everyone involved. >Authors generally have the option to keep the copyright of the papers when publishing for ACM, and at least host the papers on their homepages. You do not retain the copyright, and the only permission you get is to share it for classroom use with some other constraints. Authors posting them on their university websites is a grey area that is likely non compliant but it would be really bad PR for ACM to go after such instances. More recently, ACM has started allowing authors to pay some exorbitant fee to make the paper open access. >This is a good thing that they dominate CS/EE as they have more reasonable access costs Actually, there isn't really a big difference between the access costs. For most of the world, it's infinite. It doesn't matter if Elsevier is trying to charge $100 for a paper and ACM is trying to charge $30. Or what deals they make with libraries. It's all infinite for anyone not affiliated with a university in a western country. >It's not completely free because there are real costs to publishing The amortized cost of putting a pdf on the internet is close to 0. This is already true with arxiv. And even if you do not want to use arxiv, a static website with s3 or the new cloudflare equivalent will cost pennies per pdf.
  - lazyjeff 5y ago
    Sorry for a back-and-forth replies, but I don't want readers to be misled: > You do not retain the copyright, and the only permission you get is to share it for classroom use with some other constraints. Authors posting them on their university websites is a grey area that is likely non compliant but it would be really bad PR for ACM to go after such instances. See https://authors.acm.org/author-services/author-rights https://authors.acm.org/author-services/author-rights the options that authors have, including "Authors who prefer to retain copyright of their work can sign an exclusive licensing agreement, which gives ACM the right but not the obligation to defend the work against improper use by third parties." And the copyright block in one of my papers as an example: https://jeffhuang.com/papers/SelfE_CHI21.pdf https://jeffhuang.com/papers/SelfE_CHI21.pdf which says "© 2021 Copyright held by the owner/author(s). Publication rights licensed to ACM." (there are no fees to choosing this option, by the way) >> the executive salaries are $0 as far as I know > I have no way of verifying this, but clearly the money is going somewhere and it's not publishing. Here's an article by Vert Cerf saying that all ACM positions are voluntary and paid $0/year, if you want to believe him: https://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2013/5/163764-acm-presidents-salary-increased-by-300/fulltext https://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2013/5/163764-acm-presidents-... >> It's not completely free because there are real costs to publishing > The amortized cost of putting a pdf on the internet is close to 0. Yes and posting a jpeg on the internet is close to 0, yet AirBnB still charges a fee for their service. The publishing process (including coordinating peer review and development of multiple web apps) has more costs than hosting a pdf. You're welcome to review the non-profit filings for ACM/IEEE if you're genuinely interested in what the money is spent on. And you're always able to upload your pdf to arXiv regardless of what you do with ACM, "an example of a site ACM authors may post all versions of their work to, with the exception of the final published "Version of Record", is ArXiv" [https://www.acm.org/publications/openaccess https://www.acm.org/publications/openaccess]

shrewduser 5y ago

i've often wondered this myself... non profits with ludicrous executive salaries...

anon946 5y ago

I can't say whether or not they are worth it, but they provide some degree of branding, mainly to "adjacent" communities. If I see a paper in IEEE something, I have some degree of assurance that there is a minimum quality level, even if I'm not that familiar with the area. Also, at least for IEEE, they provide some help with running the conference, publishing the proceedings, etc. Whether or not they provide value commensurate with their cost is a separate question.

bubblethink 5y ago
This is a bit like the app store scenario. Sure, if you are a lesser known conference, having ACM/IEEE probably helps you. It really doesn't help any established conference similar to how the Apple store doesn't help Netflix.

lazyjeff 5y ago

These societies are run and composed of by academics themselves. In fact, the executive salaries are $0 as far as I know, so it's a volunteer organization. It's basically how publishing would work if academics take control away from commercial publishers, i.e. the post-disruption publishing arrangement that people in this thread are cheering for. Authors generally have the option to keep the copyright of the papers when publishing for ACM, and at least host the papers on their homepages. This is a good thing that they dominate CS/EE as they have more reasonable access costs, and many academics no longer have to publish at commercial publishers. It's not completely free because there are real costs to publishing, but it's the best option I can think of for now.

bubblethink 5y ago
>the executive salaries are $0 as far as I know I have no way of verifying this, but clearly the money is going somewhere and it's not publishing. >It's basically how publishing would work if academics take control away from commercial publishers arxiv is closer to how publishing would or should work if academics were entirely in charge. Publishing only entails putting a pdf up. All the peer review process is orthogonal which is done for free by everyone involved. >Authors generally have the option to keep the copyright of the papers when publishing for ACM, and at least host the papers on their homepages. You do not retain the copyright, and the only permission you get is to share it for classroom use with some other constraints. Authors posting them on their university websites is a grey area that is likely non compliant but it would be really bad PR for ACM to go after such instances. More recently, ACM has started allowing authors to pay some exorbitant fee to make the paper open access. >This is a good thing that they dominate CS/EE as they have more reasonable access costs Actually, there isn't really a big difference between the access costs. For most of the world, it's infinite. It doesn't matter if Elsevier is trying to charge $100 for a paper and ACM is trying to charge $30. Or what deals they make with libraries. It's all infinite for anyone not affiliated with a university in a western country. >It's not completely free because there are real costs to publishing The amortized cost of putting a pdf on the internet is close to 0. This is already true with arxiv. And even if you do not want to use arxiv, a static website with s3 or the new cloudflare equivalent will cost pennies per pdf.
- lazyjeff 5y ago
  Sorry for a back-and-forth replies, but I don't want readers to be misled: > You do not retain the copyright, and the only permission you get is to share it for classroom use with some other constraints. Authors posting them on their university websites is a grey area that is likely non compliant but it would be really bad PR for ACM to go after such instances. See https://authors.acm.org/author-services/author-rights https://authors.acm.org/author-services/author-rights the options that authors have, including "Authors who prefer to retain copyright of their work can sign an exclusive licensing agreement, which gives ACM the right but not the obligation to defend the work against improper use by third parties." And the copyright block in one of my papers as an example: https://jeffhuang.com/papers/SelfE_CHI21.pdf https://jeffhuang.com/papers/SelfE_CHI21.pdf which says "© 2021 Copyright held by the owner/author(s). Publication rights licensed to ACM." (there are no fees to choosing this option, by the way) >> the executive salaries are $0 as far as I know > I have no way of verifying this, but clearly the money is going somewhere and it's not publishing. Here's an article by Vert Cerf saying that all ACM positions are voluntary and paid $0/year, if you want to believe him: https://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2013/5/163764-acm-presidents-salary-increased-by-300/fulltext https://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2013/5/163764-acm-presidents-... >> It's not completely free because there are real costs to publishing > The amortized cost of putting a pdf on the internet is close to 0. Yes and posting a jpeg on the internet is close to 0, yet AirBnB still charges a fee for their service. The publishing process (including coordinating peer review and development of multiple web apps) has more costs than hosting a pdf. You're welcome to review the non-profit filings for ACM/IEEE if you're genuinely interested in what the money is spent on. And you're always able to upload your pdf to arXiv regardless of what you do with ACM, "an example of a site ACM authors may post all versions of their work to, with the exception of the final published "Version of Record", is ArXiv" [https://www.acm.org/publications/openaccess https://www.acm.org/publications/openaccess]