

ACM trying to subvert open access - drallison
http://www.boingboing.net/2009/12/17/association-for-comp.html 

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rfreytag
My experience of the ACM was of paying for a year's worth of the Digital
Library and finding that _everything_ I searched for in my area required an
additional fee. It was listed as available but when you tried to download it
would hit you up for another payment. When I complained about the bait-and-
switch and requested a refund they refused.

~~~
russss
The ACM just seem really underhand in general. They kept spamming me, through
several email accounts, offering me membership. Even after I joined, they
still continue to spam me.

I don't think I'm going to renew my membership when it comes up.

~~~
rfreytag
They also stepped up spamming me from quarterly to bi-weekly. I asked them to
stop - no change - so I filter out everything from them. Now they just don't
exist to me.

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tsally
I'm not longer a member of the ACM because of their position on this issue. If
you currently pay dues, take a moment to reflect on your reasons for doing so.

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silentbicycle
FWIW, it's often possible to find the full-text articles on CiteSeer
(<http://citeseer.ist.psu.edu/>) or the original author's home or faculty
pages via Google Scholar.

Also, while I graduated several years ago, I still have access to surprisingly
many research journals via my alumni library card. If you are or have been a
student, that's worth looking into.

~~~
eru
I used to ssh into university computers and browsed from there, so that I have
the right IP address and get access to journals.

~~~
silentbicycle
I can just sign in with my library card and read the journals on the library's
web site, actually.

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houseabsolute
Why I don't really care: most of the people who benefit from academic research
papers fall into one of the following categories:

    
    
        1. Academic professionals.
        2. Students.
        3. Industry professionals.
        4. Government professionals.
    

In all three cases, there is an entity that will gladly pay the paltry sum
required to get you access to ACM papers should you have even the slightest
realistic need for them. You have to work pretty hard to be in a category
where the dues will be both a significant expense and not paid for by someone
else.

That is, it's quite silly that the government pays for research which a
private organization can then benefit from without similarly paying back for
it. However, it'd be even more silly to get worked up over every minor
injustice when there are so much greater ones in equally easy reach.

~~~
eru
What about interested layman?

~~~
houseabsolute
Not a whole lot of those doing groundbreaking work in the field. And there
aren't many interested laymen. On the whole, it seems unlikely to cause any
measurable harm to the future if said laymen cannot read academic papers for
free.

~~~
eru
Contrast the obsession with simplifying sign-on forms, to lower the threshold
for participation in web applications.

~~~
houseabsolute
Now contrast the simplicity of interacting with the most complex web
application and the comparative overwhelming depth and difficulty of making
novel findings in computer science.

~~~
eru
I don't see the analogy.

People use quite simple tools for complex interactions with other human beings
(e.g. facebook). Someone interested in research may use quite simple tools
like evince to view the latest research papers.

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martian
This is a persistent issue in all academia. I currently have access through a
university, but trying to do research without someone paying your way is
absurdly difficult. Of course the Internet is all about open-access, and I'm
all for open-source software. It continually surprises me that academics don't
worry more about this.

Aaron Swartz wrote (tangentially) about this recently:
<http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/disciplinarybubbles>

Disciplinary bubbles and the Academic Firewall keep academia needlessly
separated from the trials and delights of reality.

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amackera
Well it worked for me. The only reason I'm a member of the ACM is to get
access to their full-text articles.

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yaroslavvb
Also, even when the papers are not posted on author's webpages, they are often
happy to send you a copy over email.

Funny enough, I have the same issue with my old student ID -- it works to get
access to those databases long after I graduated

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ScottWhigham
404'ed - hmmmmm

~~~
ScottWhigham
I love how someone went through the effort to downmod me because I got a 404
page lol

~~~
silentbicycle
In what way does noting that you got a 404 contribute to the conversation?

~~~
ScottWhigham
In what way does ignoring the fact that the URL 404'ed make HN a better place?

~~~
eru
Silence does not clutter the channel. Thus only breaking silence needs
justification.

