4 ms·

The paywall has to go. As researchers, the very purpose behind publishing is to make our work available to as many people as possible. The ACM and other publis

The paywall has to go. As researchers, the very purpose behind publishing is to make our work available to as many people as possible. The ACM and other publishers used to facilitate this. Now, the role they play has the exact opposite effect - that of restricting access to information. Furthermore, requiring authors to hand over copyright, as opposed to licensing their work to ACM under suitable terms (e.g. creative commons) no longer make sense. I note the recent introduction of author-pays publishing, and this is a step in the right direction, but the prices seem way out of line given distribution costs. I made the decision several years ago that I will not allow my scholarly work to be restricted from those who wish to view it but aren't members. As such, I refuse to publish in any venue that does not allow open access. I see the ACM primarily as a racket, acting like a self-interested, for-profit corporation - not an one that represents the true ethos of the scientific community, which involves openly sharing the results of research. I encourage anyone who still has any faith in the paywall publishing ecosystem to watch the recent Aaron Swartz documentary, "The Internet's own Boy". This will make you angry and realise how corrupt the system of ACM, IEEE, Elsevier and similar organisations truly is. If ACM wishes to have any relevance going forward, it needs fundamental change, lead from the top.

seanmcdirmid 12y ago
To be fair, you can put your paper on your own site with minimal modifications (an extended version with an extra sentence). Most people who care about their papers do this, but it is very annoying that the Digital Library is not a very effective resource, and that the ACM is stuck mostly in the past.
- asgard1024 12y ago
  Living authors can put their paper online, yes. But what about all the older articles from authors that are already dead, to which the copyright is now owned by some corporation? That's one of the worst things in the current copyright system.
  - seanmcdirmid 12y ago
    Yes, this gets me also: the DL is often the only place where an old paper can be found.
- peterkelly 12y ago
  As asgard1024 mentioned, yes you can make the paper available on your own personal site. However personal websites have a lifespan - people move institutions, change jobs (e.g. in my case into industry), and eventually die. Thus the need for a repository of publications maintained by a third party. ACM's digital library serves this role - and well (for those with access to it) - but the fact that copyright is already surrendered by the author prevents any other third-parties from building similar repositories. Given that doing so is relatively cheap and easy with the technology available today, I see substantial value in making it legally possible for this to be done; an example where this has been done is arxiv.org. These sites are basically the Internet equivalent of libraries, and are analogous to mirrors or repositories of open source software. Having this ability means we won't lose the material just because the author is no longer willing or able to maintain their personal website.
  - seanmcdirmid 12y ago
    Citeseer caches papers, I'm not sure how legal that is. I find my papers get copied a bit around the web, and there is always Google's books' project. I don't see much point to arxiv, and I also am not sure how to put my papers there given that it wants me to use latex in some certain way. The real DL disruptor is Google Scholar, which provides much more value in just making things "findable" as well as dealing reasonably well with citations and finding a free copy somewhere. Citeseer used to fill that roll, but hasn't been updated in a long time. How fast a paper goes into obscurity is a litmus test in determining its value (and if its worth downloading and reading). So if the author stops caring after 5 years, then why should we care also? Much of what gets published just isn't very good. On the other hand, a good paper (that people find valuable) will get copied around to various locations, and will be findable that way. But there is always stuff that falls through the cracks of this test...like old overlooked work that was actually decent, but I have the feeling that we've expanded so much as a discipline, that finding such work will be virtually impossible for anything published after 1997 or so, DL or no DL.
- _delirium 12y ago
  There's also a weird recent addition, the "Author-izer" [1], where the author can generate non-paywalled direct links to the definitive ACM DL version, and post those links on their personal website. This is distinct from the author-pays open-access option in that it's free, but just generates open-access links that you can post elsewhere, rather than making the paper fully open-access, as the pay option does. I don't bother to use it myself though, and instead just self-host a copy of the final PDF. [1] http://www.acm.org/publications/acm-author-izer-service http://www.acm.org/publications/acm-author-izer-service
deepGem 12y ago
I found the Google scholar link mentioned by one of the commentors. It is quite useful. Check out the below link for a simple search on graph databases. http://scholar.google.co.in/scholar?q=graph+databases&btnG=&hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5 http://scholar.google.co.in/scholar?q=graph+databases&btnG=&... The primary URLs point to ACM DL but the RHS links point to alternative free sources.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
fractallyte 12y ago
It's gratifying to read such an insightful, unequivocal comment on HN - and I hope you also emailed it as (relevant!) feedback to the two addresses provided in the article!

seanmcdirmid 12y ago

To be fair, you can put your paper on your own site with minimal modifications (an extended version with an extra sentence). Most people who care about their papers do this, but it is very annoying that the Digital Library is not a very effective resource, and that the ACM is stuck mostly in the past.

asgard1024 12y ago
Living authors can put their paper online, yes. But what about all the older articles from authors that are already dead, to which the copyright is now owned by some corporation? That's one of the worst things in the current copyright system.
- seanmcdirmid 12y ago
  Yes, this gets me also: the DL is often the only place where an old paper can be found.
peterkelly 12y ago
As asgard1024 mentioned, yes you can make the paper available on your own personal site. However personal websites have a lifespan - people move institutions, change jobs (e.g. in my case into industry), and eventually die. Thus the need for a repository of publications maintained by a third party. ACM's digital library serves this role - and well (for those with access to it) - but the fact that copyright is already surrendered by the author prevents any other third-parties from building similar repositories. Given that doing so is relatively cheap and easy with the technology available today, I see substantial value in making it legally possible for this to be done; an example where this has been done is arxiv.org. These sites are basically the Internet equivalent of libraries, and are analogous to mirrors or repositories of open source software. Having this ability means we won't lose the material just because the author is no longer willing or able to maintain their personal website.
- seanmcdirmid 12y ago
  Citeseer caches papers, I'm not sure how legal that is. I find my papers get copied a bit around the web, and there is always Google's books' project. I don't see much point to arxiv, and I also am not sure how to put my papers there given that it wants me to use latex in some certain way. The real DL disruptor is Google Scholar, which provides much more value in just making things "findable" as well as dealing reasonably well with citations and finding a free copy somewhere. Citeseer used to fill that roll, but hasn't been updated in a long time. How fast a paper goes into obscurity is a litmus test in determining its value (and if its worth downloading and reading). So if the author stops caring after 5 years, then why should we care also? Much of what gets published just isn't very good. On the other hand, a good paper (that people find valuable) will get copied around to various locations, and will be findable that way. But there is always stuff that falls through the cracks of this test...like old overlooked work that was actually decent, but I have the feeling that we've expanded so much as a discipline, that finding such work will be virtually impossible for anything published after 1997 or so, DL or no DL.
_delirium 12y ago
There's also a weird recent addition, the "Author-izer" [1], where the author can generate non-paywalled direct links to the definitive ACM DL version, and post those links on their personal website. This is distinct from the author-pays open-access option in that it's free, but just generates open-access links that you can post elsewhere, rather than making the paper fully open-access, as the pay option does. I don't bother to use it myself though, and instead just self-host a copy of the final PDF. [1] http://www.acm.org/publications/acm-author-izer-service http://www.acm.org/publications/acm-author-izer-service

deepGem 12y ago

I found the Google scholar link mentioned by one of the commentors. It is quite useful. Check out the below link for a simple search on graph databases. http://scholar.google.co.in/scholar?q=graph+databases&btnG=&hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5 http://scholar.google.co.in/scholar?q=graph+databases&btnG=&... The primary URLs point to ACM DL but the RHS links point to alternative free sources.

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]

fractallyte 12y ago

It's gratifying to read such an insightful, unequivocal comment on HN - and I hope you also emailed it as (relevant!) feedback to the two addresses provided in the article!