
IEEE Refuses to Accept Public-Domain Papers? - powertower
http://cr.yp.to/writing/ieee.html
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ajays
This is why I canceled my membership in IEEE (and ACM). I believe these
organizations have gone beyond their stated purpose, and now exist purely to
sustain themselves and their monopolies on conferences.

If we just started boycotting them, they'd crumble in no time.

~~~
sliverstorm
_If we just started boycotting them, they'd crumble in no time._

Would that be a good thing? I haven't seen much evidence that IEEE is a no-
good parasite. It's a huge leap to go from "gone beyond their stated purpose"
and "exist purely to sustain themselves".

Don't forget- the last time your computer performed a floating point op, you
benefited from the existence of IEEE (IEEE 754). The last time you used a
network adapter, you benefited from the IEEE (IEEE 802.3 & 802.11), and I'm
guessing it hasn't been long since you last used said adapter.

~~~
irahul
> Don't forget- the last time your computer performed a floating point op, you
> benefited from the existence of IEEE (IEEE 754)

>The last time you used a network adapter, you benefited from the IEEE (IEEE
802.3 & 802.11),

All IEEE is doing here is acting as a standardization committee. IEEE didn't
invent floating points or ethernet adapters.

Not everything is standardized by IEEE(in fact very little, if you are talking
computers), and stuff will work fine if IEEE is vaporized today. IEEE didn't
invent anything, new stuff will keep getting invented, and if need be, some
other label will be stuck on them.

~~~
sliverstorm
I know they didn't invent them, but standards are a good thing.

~~~
greyfade
We have other standardization entities.

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drats
So no papers from Princeton?[1]

[1]<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3046651>

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chx
This is ancient (Last-Modified: Mon, 21 Nov 2005), everyone knows this
already, why was it posted suddenly?

~~~
metafour
How are you determining the date?

The page itself has no date which I think is unhelpful and I was going to ask
if anyone knew when this was posted.

~~~
jmillikin
It's in the HTTP headers. Some browsers (such as Firefox) show it in a "page
info" dialog.

~~~
kragen
All browsers except Chrome, in my experience.

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ggchappell
This is, I think, misleading. There is nothing unusual about IEEE copyright
policies. Requiring copyright assignment is standard procedure for academic
journals, with exceptions made for U.S. govt. works. As noted in the last
paragraph, the American Mathematical Society bucks the trend (they "suggest",
rather than require, copyright assignment), but they are a rarity.

Other than that, we have one person (the IEEE Intellectual Property Rights
Manager) who misunderstands the law and does not behave in a very friendly
manner.

The above do not strike me as sufficient reasons for singling out the IEEE for
blacklisting. If you want, blacklist everyone who puts publicly funded
research behind paywalls. Or blacklist no one. But just the IEEE? That doesn't
make sense.

~~~
wnight
Blacklist anyone who stands up for an exploitative policy. If the others wise
up soon enough they may never get called on it.

~~~
loup-vaillant
In other words, hit the nail that stands out. This feels a bit totalitarian,
but it might just work.

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wnight
You need to know why "they" are doing "it". But yeah, if "it" is something
"they" can afford to stop, then yes.

IEEE is famous enough it would survive even if this was a small market
negative.

It's more problematic with low-end products made by child labor for instance.
If they couldn't compete with other child-labor products they'd go out of
business. There you need to do a more comprehensive blacklist or you're just
swapping the devil you know for the ones you don't.

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mturmon
This is a very interesting post.

I did not know that authors who are not with the government had tried to put
works in the public domain, that are submitted to IEEE. I didn't know this was
possible.

I know it certainly is standard policy for government researchers and labs to
retain copyright when work is submitted to IEEE (or anywhere).

Sometimes publishers say tough words about how this isn't possible, and you
have to sign their copyright form, and you're holding up publication of the
work. It's BS. The government copyright people will talk sense into them, and
retain copyright so that the work can be distributed openly.

~~~
bdonlan
Federally commissioned works do not 'retain copyright'. They don't have
copyright _at all_ (by law). As such, there is no legal basis for restricting
copying of such works. Of course, this includes the IEEE - they can republish
all they want, they just can't stop anyone else from republishing, because the
copyright never existed in the first place.

~~~
mturmon
I produce work as part of an FFRDC. The lawyer-derived boilerplate I must put
on my work says (in part) "Copyright 2011".

But, it's OK to republish the work in any way, including as part of a public
web site or government report.

I interpreted this as meaning that the government retains copyright, but that
may be the wrong legal phrasing. The point is that the work is freely
available.

~~~
thyrsus
Lawyers can make mistakes, however, it might have to do with non-U.S. rights
or the rights of incorporated material:
[https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Copyright_sta...](https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Copyright_status_of_work_by_the_U.S._government)

~~~
mturmon
Thanks, this clears it up. The discrepancy is that I'm a researcher at a
national lab, but not an employee of the US government. There are lots of such
people.

Thus, copyright does seem to apply to work done by me.

I know from experience that the publication people at my lab will arm-twist to
ensure copyright is not retained by an external publisher, like Springer or
IEEE, and that the work remains openly available.

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desaiguddu
I applied this logic.. ! My Original paper is with IEEE copyright. But I made
that Paper public on my blog with IEEE copyright.

<http://dndcaptcha.blogspot.com/2010/04/textareaid.html>

If a person wants to buy a paper he can buy from IEEE, but a person just want
to refer the paper with all details he can freely do so from my Blog website.

I don't know whether its a right approach or not? But I didn't wanted my
research to just sit in some Publishers Library.

If we publish more work in public , we get more people involve in to those
research work. :)

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mitultiwari
This is disappointing. It has been hard to find the soft copy of IEEE papers.
Now it will be even harder. IEEE is losing it's value among CS people.

Good that most of CS papers are published in ACM conferences, and most of the
authors publish a soft copy on their homepages.

Also, more and more CS people are posting their papers on arxiv.org.

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michael_dorfman
The ACM recently published an editorial in the CACM explaining the reasons
behind this policy.

Here is a brief excerpt:

 _By owning exclusive publication rights to articles, ACM is able to develop
salable publication products that sustain its top-quality publishing programs
and services; ensure access to organized collections by current and future
generations of readers; and invest continuously in new titles and in services
like referrer-linking, profiling, and metrics, which serve the community.
Furthermore, it allows ACM to efficiently clear rights for the creation,
dissemination, and translation of collections of articles that benefit the
computing community that would be impossible if individual authors or their
heirs had to be contacted for permission. Ownership of copyright allows ACM to
pursue cases of plagiarism. The number of these handled has been steadily
growing; some 20 cases were handled by ACM in the last year. Having ACM
investigate and take action removes this burden from our authors, and ACM is
more likely to obtain a satisfactory outcome (for example, having the
offending material removed from a repository) than an individual._

Personally, I gladly pay money every year to the ACM and the IEEE, as I feel I
get excellent value for it. I don't begrudge them their business model, and I
don't think there is anything particularly nefarious about their copyright
policy (which explicitly allows authors to post freely available copies of
their articles for non-commercial purposes.)

~~~
raphman
Valuable point. I'm not sure if I agree with the "excellent value". However,
at least ACM tries to be reasonably fair. Recently they seem to have
introduced a clause in the copyright transfer from which allows you to retain
copyright for specific figures in your paper. Still a far way from Open Access
but way better than all other major publishers. What I really hate about
publishers like Elsevier or Springer is that they claim to add value by
ensuring only high-quality papers get published. In reality, every major
publisher, except ACM, seems to be perfectly happy with publishing a lot of
rubbish research.

(My favorite: El Naschie's photo gallery in Elsevier's _Chaos, Solitons and
Fractals_ : www.el-naschie.net/bilder/file/Photo-Gallery.pdf)

~~~
michael_dorfman
When I look at the quality and quantity of journals in the archives that I get
access to for a couple hundred bucks a year, I'm flabbergasted. I only wish
there was something similar for the Humanities-- I'd pay in a heartbeat for
that.

Elsevier and Springer's pricing, in contrast, is extortionate.

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X4
Seriously can you please answer me, why someone who is so smart to have a Dr.
degree or other title would be willing to work for free, or even pay for it??

I really don't understand it, what is special about IEEE. Why do Scientists
send their papers or findings to IEEE etc. instead of just publishing it?
Seriously, can someone please give me an insightfull answer to this?

If you answer with, nobody has been able to to code system x, that makes IEEE
so special and unique, then it's not valid point I think. Because there are
enough developers who could pull out a P2P Scientific Document store in a
matter of days.

Heck, if someone writes text that he think is valuable and is willing to share
it with the public domain, why doesn't he just upload it to say: P2P Networks,
Cloudstorages or anything else that helps in this matter?

~~~
abrahamsen
The majority of university research depends on external funding. In order to
get funding, you as many published papers in high ranking journals.

You get zero credit for self-published papers, or papers in non-ranked
journals.

So a researchers will always look after the highest ranked journal that is
likely to publish a particular result. Issues of copyright get no regard and
accessibility gets very little. Copyright ownership won't get you funding.
Accessibility might get you more citations (which also affects ranking), but
most citations come from other University researchers, who have access anyway
through their libraries.

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PaddleSlapper
Though news to me, be aware this is old news - page published 21 November
2005. Has anything changed since then?

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frazerb
I just struggle to understand how IEEE's publication policy contributes to
"advancing technological innovation [..] for the benefit of humanity".

IEEE publication policy is nothing but a barrier to innovation.

Shame WikiLeaks / anonymous / whoever couldn't help us all out here.

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doctoboggan
It will take reputable referees from some journal to volunteer their time to
judge papers submitted in the public domain.

~~~
fmota
They volunteer their time anyway. They might as well do so for open access
journals.

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nickcobb
This was published 5 years ago?

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derleth
I'm beginning to doubt the "IEEE Intellectual Property Rights Manager" has the
authority to do what he's doing, and I'm beginning to think this will blow
over with an official response from the IEEE saying as much and rescinding
this joker's fake 'policy'.

~~~
guelo
What would be the "IEEE Intellectual Property Rights Manager"'s incentive to
act in this manner if not under official order from IEEE to minimize the
amount of public domain content?

~~~
burgerbrain
Not everyone acts rationally you know. He could just be an idiot...

~~~
Natsu
Somehow, that reminds me of the IEEE-USA amicus brief on software patents:

[http://www.groklaw.net/articlebasic.php?story=20090922030639...](http://www.groklaw.net/articlebasic.php?story=20090922030639824)

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SeanLuke
It's obvious that IEEE wouldn't accept such papers. Like any publisher, its
business model is based on ownership of copyright. So this is a bit of a
tempest in a teacup.

Instead, let me offer a more interesting factoid: to the best of my knowledge,
in the United States, and probably in certain other countries, there is no
such concept as a private individual dedicating a publication to the public
domain.

Documents fall in public domain when the owners' copyrights have expired. For
the federal government, the expiration is immediate. For everyone else, there
is no legal mechanism for hastening a document's copyright expiration. [This
is why it's foolish to "put software in the public domain". You haven't
actually done anything at all.]

~~~
kkowalczyk
1\. re: Public Domain

Let's see:

a) random person on the internet (SeanLuke) says you can't dedicate your work
to Public Domain

b) Creative Commons, which has a staff of lawyers, including very prominent
and respected Lawrance Lessig:
<http://wiki.creativecommons.org/Public_domain>,
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_domain>

2\. re: "obviousness". There's nothing "obvious" about IEEE's greed. The
stated goal of IEEE is <http://www.ieee.org/about/index.html>:

"IEEE is the world’s largest professional association dedicated to advancing
technological innovation and excellence for the benefit of humanity. IEEE and
its members inspire a global community through IEEE's highly cited
publications, conferences, technology standards, and professional and
educational activities."

The "obvious" thing, consistent with their stated mission would be to try to
disseminate useful information to the largest number of people, like, say,
Wikipedia or Khan Academy.

It's sad and shameful that they put profits above "advancing technological
innovation and excellence for the benefit of humanity".

~~~
stan_rogers
Bringing up the Creative Commons in this respect is sort of undermining your
own argument. CC0[1] is a license acknowledging that, while it may be legally
impossible to voluntarily and irrevocably extinguish copyright in works in
which copyright naturally subsumes (putting a work into the public domain
proper), as is the case in Canada under the _Copyright Act (R.S.C., 1985, c.
C-42)_ , to the extent possible under law, you make a grant of license
_equivalent_ to usage rights for works in the public domain. The results are
similar, but the universal grant of license is revocable within the lifetime
of the copyright (that is, the license may be withdrawn, and use after the
withdrawal that is not ongoing from the period of the license would be subject
to explicit grants of license).

