

US Gov Requests Feedback on Open Access – ACM Gets it Wrong (Again) - drallison
http://www.realtimerendering.com/blog/us-gov-requests-feedback-on-open-access-acm-gets-it-wrong-again/

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lutorm
What a golden quote:

"How would U.S. voters react to a Senator claiming that a given piece of
legislation (say, one reducing restrictions on campaign financing) “strikes a
fundamental balance between the needs of the Senate and those of the United
States of America”?

In my minds eye, I saw Joe Lieberman giving a press conference: "The health-
care bill now strikes an appropriate balance between the interests of Joe
Lieberman and those of the United States of America".

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Kadin
Well, that actually seems more reasonable than the ACM situation. I _expect_
Lieberman, as an individual, to have interests that are not the same as his
constituents'. (He may be derelict in his duty as a Senator if he puts his own
interests above those of his constituents, but that's a discussion for another
day.) But there's no reasonable expectation, in my mind, that Lieberman's
interests as an individual and my interests as a voter are going to be the
same.

Likewise, I wouldn't expect the interests of one of the ACM's directors -- as
individuals -- to be the same as the ACM's membership. (I'd want them to set
aside their personal interests while acting in their official capacity within
the organization, but that's different from saying that their personal
interests don't exist.) But I would expect the ACM _as an organization_ to
reflect the interests of the membership.

When an organization that supposedly exists for the benefit of its membership
starts doing things that are almost certainly out of line with the best
interests of the membership, it's a good sign that the organization has been
subverted and is being used for some other purpose (e.g. simple self-
perpetuation).

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djcapelis
I just left the following comment on the OSTP blog: (We submitted an NSF
proposal yesterday, so this is particularly well-timed.)

As a graduate student and researcher in Computer Science I would welcome the
application of NIH’s open publication policy to NSF funded research as well. I
just helped submit an NSF proposal and would welcome such guidelines on our
research. We already follow them for the most part, and it would help us
ensure that conferences and publishers won’t object to the dissemination of
the results of our research if it’s not just our own desire, but an obligation
from our funding agency.

I would also appreciate if you look into the feasibility of establishing open
data and open source requirements for the CISE division of NSF where funded
projects would be obligated provide data generated as part of the research
(this isn’t always reasonable, so some care will be necessary in formulating
this policy) as well as source code used. Right now, especially in computer
science, it’s extremely difficult to replicate the results of experiments and
often we find that researchers have to invest time in reverse engineering
someone’s experiment simply to be able to compare the results one research got
with the results of another or their own work. In addition, university
technology transfer departments sometimes get in the way of researchers who
try and open up their work. Making this a firm requirement from the funding
agency provides the researchers with the credibility and leverage they need to
ensure technology transfer departments stop interfering with dissemination
efforts.

It’s rare someone ever asks for a requirement, but in this case I think
extending these types of requirements to NSF programs will give us the power
and leverage we need to overcome the obstacles in the way of disseminating our
work in the fashion we’d like to be doing anyways.

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smutticus
Article is spot on.

This makes me want to cancel my ACM membership. Which I only got in the first
place so that I could get access to their digital library of published papers.

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waterlesscloud
I'm sure they're worried about a membership drop, but you really would think
that the ACM of all people would understand that false scarcity is not a
business model for information-based organizations in today's world.

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blasdel
The ACM have always been a bucket of dicks -- their Digital Library index
pages dominate Google search results but have no content.

They used to have some intentionally confusing text like "Please login with
your free ACM Web Account to see the full text". Sure the account itself is
free, but the subscriptions required to see anything ain't. All that happened
is that I get spammed by them regularly with _Join ACM today and receive a 15%
discount plus an ACM Free World Clock Calculator!_

A desk calculator! I don't see how they could be more out of touch.

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codeodor
As much as I'd like to see open access to ACM and other journals, I wonder how
much it would benefit anyone? Surely almost everyone doing that work has a
subscription. If not an outright membership, at least the University library
will get them the articles.

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heresy
Screw ACM, glad I ignored all their spamming to get me to renew my membership.
Never again.

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Daishiman
Good thing my ACM membership has just expired.

