

The Road to Serfdom, ACM edition - yummyfajitas
http://behind-the-enemy-lines.blogspot.com/2011/03/road-to-serfdom-acm-version.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+AComputerScientistInABusinessSchool+(A+Computer+Scientist+in+a+Business+School)&utm_content=Google+Feedfetcher

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tytso
At least for computer scientists, one alternative is to publish at conferences
which are either run by Usenix, or where Usenix is a co-sponsor, since at
least Usenix requires that the papers be released on the Usenix website w/o
any kind of ACM-style b.s. paywall.

At this point, my personal policy is simply to refuse submit or assist with
any conference where papers are held hostage behind a paywall, whether it is
ACM or some other organization. Fortunately I'm not an academic, and so I
don't have to get tenure, so it's relatively easy for me to have this policy.
But if enough people do this, maybe ACM will either (a) get this message, or
(b) disappear, like the dinosaurs....

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tomjen3
This is a pretty common problem across the spectrum of scientific publishing.
The best way to solve this is to dissolve groups like the ACM and make all
scientific published facts, notes, journals, etc the legal property of those
who founded the research.

In the mean time, the best way to stop this nonsense is to refuse to cite
papers from publishers who won't give authors the right to publish their
papers outside of their systems and who charge people to access their systems.

~~~
hsmyers
A bit more on the pro-activity front, I'd suggest that every time they send
you a plea to join, you send back in their postage paid envelope a nicely
typed letter detailing just how cold it will need to be in hell before you
would every join or re-join...

~~~
SkyMarshal
Or explain the problem exactly and what changes would be required for you to
join. If enough such letters came back to them, it might actually have an
effect.

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lukeschlather
I'm sure there are plenty of ACM members on this site. How difficult would it
be to elect a council that will pursue a more open policy?

Personally, I let my ACM membership lapse after finishing college (and seeing
the corresponding rate hike) since it seems clear that the ACM is not acting
in the best interests of its members.

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Jun8
Here are my thoughts:

1) Big professional societies like ACM and IEEE will not just dissolve or go
away (I vaguely remember being told that IEEE was the largest professional
society in the world!). This is a good thing. We need these to manage the
complicated management of prestige in the academic fields, e.g. senior
members, fellows, etc and arrange conferences and similar gatherings. I am a
member of IEEE (been for the past 11 years) and will gladly pay my dues just
for these services.

2) However, the outdated paper publishing approach that these societies are
pursuing has to be stopped. Now, it won't stop on its own because of the "if
it ain't broke" principle. There has to be some definitive act to show the
world a better solution. This could be (i) creating a website and put pirated
versions of all recent papers (e.g. in the last 10 years) for selected
journals, while offering much better search tools than are currently offered
at the society web sites; and/or (ii) convincing more and more professionals
to put up papers on personal pages, make it prestigious to do so, again
perhaps using a central site, similar to Citeseer.

~~~
jdminhbg
I am a non-academic.

"We need these to manage the complicated management of prestige in the
academic fields, e.g. senior members, fellows, etc and arrange conferences and
similar gatherings."

Can I ask why? There are lots of well-organized conferences and gatherings in
the non-academic software world -- is there something peculiar to academia
that makes organizing harder? Ditto prestige management -- what would go wrong
if there weren't a body handing out status awards?

~~~
Jun8
I think there are several differences between academic and non-academic world
and bodies like are current solutions:

1) In the non-academic world, prestige (or whatever you want to call it) is
measured by the projects, you've done, your blog, your HN, SO, etc. karma
points. There are no good analogs of these in academia.

2) Academia is much more international. When I meet a professor who is an IEEE
Fellow from, say, China, that gives me a certain understanding of their
accomplishments (I know, flawed, but sometimes the only way, if s/he's from a
university you don't know). If, on the other, you meet a hacker from Japan, he
might tell you the open source projects he contributed, companies he started,
etc.

3) Then there's the question of paper review. Based on the huge number of
papers to be reviewed, there's a need for a body to organize the process and
find qualified people to review them.

I'm not saying the system is ideal, but the same type of academic
organizations have sprouted in many different disciplines. Maybe Internet
tools will change the situation. Note that academic people are usually old, so
we need to wait for the next generation to become professors to see the full
effect.

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k3dz
On IEEE: <http://cr.yp.to/writing/ieee.html>

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stitchy
Wow. I was not aware of those policies. I'm suddenly very glad I let my
membership lapse.

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mark_l_watson
I have been a member of the ACM off and on since the mid 1970s. I am
disappointed by some aspects of their more recent behavior, but for now I will
keep up with my current membership.

It is really awful that authors can't post their own papers on their web
sites, etc.

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evangineer
With these kinds of terms, it seems ACM are firmly on the Road to Irrelevance!

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VladRussian
what is ACM? :)

Personally, the most interesting, for me at least, articles of the last decade
- the ones of Perelman's - i read from the arXiv.

Until the last couple of years, having free access to IEEE, i was checking my
former branch of science there as well - nothing new or interesting, just
minor variations, improvements and recombinations of previous results. Nothing
that i'd pay money to read.

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whomelse
See also <http://www.crypto.com/blog/copywrongs>

