
Open access to ACM Digital Library during coronavirus pandemic - scott_s
https://www.acm.org/articles/bulletins/2020/march/dl-access-during-covid-19
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cs702
The income from the ACM/IEEE's investment portfolio is large enough that it
could fund _all_ of arXiv.org's annual expenses ~20 times over, in perpetuity,
without dipping into capital. See this thread for details:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22103763](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22103763)

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bubblethink
Btw, ACM has started adding some drm banner (rightslink) to the papers. This
seems like a recent addition. Why do these bodies (ACM/IEEE) exist ? I get the
journal prestige angle and the loop that is hard to break, but for CS, most of
it is conference driven. Any sub-field has about 50 people who call the shots.
Why don't these 50 people decide not to be associated with ACM/IEEE ? What's
in it for them ? Is it just apathy ? For example, the PC of a top conference
(say ISCA) could just fork it for next year onwards (say to SCA) and remove
the affiliation with ACM/IEEE. Since the sub-fields are quite small, there
isn't a huge risk of loss of prestige or dilution. You follow where the PC
goes. In general, the community decides that there are 3-4 top conferences in
the area. Once you migrate those 3-4, you have taken back control.
csrankings.org does a reasonable job of capturing the top conferences in every
area. If you are on the PC of any of these conferences, I would like to know
why this hasn't happened yet. Fortunately, some of the top ones (usenix ones,
vldb, nips, etc.) are open access, and we should have all of them migrate.

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acd
If you would like please consider becoming a professional member $99/year of
ACM then you also get access to Safaribooksonline. Personally I think its good
value for money.

[https://www.acm.org/membership/membership-
options](https://www.acm.org/membership/membership-options)

~~~
packetslave
IIRC (admittedly it's been a few years), ACM Membership only got you access to
a _selection_ of material from Safari, not the whole thing.

That might have changed given that Safari has reorganized and changed like 5x
in the past few years.

Anyone confirm?

~~~
wbsun
Last year, I explicitly checked with Safari customer service about this, told
them this is too good to be true since a regular Safari membership costs 3x of
the ACM membership. The customer service replied and confirmed there is
nothing different. So go for it :) The basic ACM membership is really a good
deal.

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nimish
There was never a reason this wasn't open access, except to hoard information.
Someone archive this and make it free forever.

~~~
abnry
I'm really curious how such an organization can ever maintain their copyright
in the future as the defense could always say the defendant obtained the pdf
from the free trial.

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Rerarom
The pdfs can be timestamped.

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convolvatron
if you make this permanent I'd be happy to start paying my dues again

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mindcrime
Same here.

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mr337
Same here as well!

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alharith
I know this place discourages this sort of thing, but really want to make this
emphasized in case anyone from the ACM is reading:

same here x3!

~~~
sitkack
As someone with a corporate account and a scihub user, I want to declare the
same (this isn't new). Open access to civilization's research is the is how a
mature civilization should behave. I would gladly start paying ACM dues again
if they kept this access open.

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a3_nm
Part of me can't help but suspect that they are also doing this because,
believe it or not, many computer science researchers don't know that these
paywalls exist, because they are subscribed through their university. Now that
they are stuck at home, these researchers could start noticing how
inconvenient and ridiculous these paywalls are, given that they are the ones
who write and typeset the papers and review the research for free.

So it may be a smart move for ACM to avoid making researchers aware of
paywalls, and continuing to drag this outdated publication model for a few
more years... (If I'm not mistaken, most subscription money comes from
universities, which subscribe annually, and there's very little revenue from
individual downloads, so most likely this measure isn't actually costing ACM
much in terms of revenue.)

~~~
aglionby
It's true (at least in my experience) that the paywall is transparently dealt
with when connecting from a university network, but most sites make it pretty
easy to access their content via your institutional login even if you're not.

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justin66
At first glance this appears to include everything _including conference
proceedings,_ which makes it better than the access I had when I was in
graduate school and better than I have currently as a standard ACM member. I
hope I'm correct about that.

~~~
chrisseaton
> better than the access I had when I was in graduate school

How did you function as a graduate student without access to conference
proceedings?

> better than I have currently as a standard ACM member

I think that's only if you de-select the option for the library, which people
often do if they have institutional access (which will be almost all academic
and industrial researchers I guess.)

~~~
justin66
> How did you function as a graduate student without access to conference
> proceedings?

I don't remember too many instances where a paper I wanted could not be found
(read into that whatever you like), but I do remember hitting some annoying
limits in my institution's access.

> I think that's only if you de-select the option for the library, which
> people often do if they have institutional access (which will be almost all
> academic and industrial researchers I guess.)

I only recently signed up., but I think it's possible we're not talking about
the same thing. If my base level membership has access to all conference
proceedings without additional charge - which seems to be what your comment is
implying - it's a pleasant surprise.

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EamonnMR
Check out the HOPL conferences, they're really fascinating. I'll post a link
if I can find an index of them.

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seanmcdirmid
Unfortunately, HOPL 4 has been postponed because of the virus, but that will
be a hoot, with Rich Hickey, Don Syme, Dan Ingalls, Robert Harper, Brendan
Eich, Walter Bright, Bjarne Stroustrup....

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alharith
Alright, someone tell me what are some must downloads? I've been out of
college for a while so haven't kept up.

edit: I am most interested in models of computing, and more recently ML-family
of languages, and the theories behind it. I am also generally interested in
those papers that people view as "classics" or serve as computing history.
Hoares CSP, or most anything by Dijkstra that may not be public already.

~~~
kick
What are you interested in? The recommendations I can make for someone
fascinated with LISP are different than the ones I can make for someone
interested in computing history are different than the ones I can make for
someone interested in processor design and so on. There's a very wide
selection here.

~~~
carapace
Given your submissions to HN I'd say just go with whatever _you 're_
interested in, it's bound to be good. ;-)

As for myself, anything in re: compiling functional and/or stack-based
languages; and DSLs for GUIs.

Cheers!

~~~
kick
_APL compilation and interpretation by translating to F83VEC_ ; Naugle

[https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/22415.22032](https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/22415.22032)

Here's a double-hitter: compiling a functional language (APL) to a stack-based
language (FORTH).

~~~
carapace
_awesome_

\- - - -

I found a couple of interesting tidbits:

Computer programming as an art, Donald E. Knuth
[https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/361604.361612](https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/361604.361612)

Prolog - the language and its implementation compared with Lisp, David H D
Warren, Luis M Pereira, Fernando C. N. Pereira
[https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/872734.806939](https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/872734.806939)

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rbanffy
Can we shame the IEEE and their Computer Society into doing the same?

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rbanffy
[https://twitter.com/ComputerSociety/status/12451145516722135...](https://twitter.com/ComputerSociety/status/1245114551672213506?s=19)

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dedosk
Do you have any tip for android app that can provide some enhanced experience
reading the pdf articles (like from ACM?) on Android mobile phone?

I don't mean generic PDF reader for Android. I'm looking for something that
provides similar user experience like Firefox's "reader view". Is there
something like that?

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chrisxcross
It should be Open Access all the time. Keep the change!

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thr0w__4w4y
This is great news, and a kind gesture of the ACM. I used to be a member, fell
off years ago, but this might inspire me to re-join. I'd been thinking
membership was >= $199, maybe it used to be? but now @ $99 it seems
worthwhile.

Total unrelated aside: it's funny that the name of the person making this
announcement has a name which is essentially two foods ("Cherri Pancake").
Then again, I had a classmate in primary school whose name was Candy Kane
(well, Candice, but yes she went by "Candy" in 4th grade).

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robomartin
I wrote a paper for an ACM conference back in the early 80's. It has existed
behind a paywall ever since. I fail to see how this is aligned with the
concept of sharing science...when an organization takes ownership of papers
just because they happen to put on a conference. In my opinion, the same
applies to IEEE and other organizations. And this, again, my opinion, is
particularly true of taxpayer-funded university research that ends-up behind
paywalls.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
You can usually get away with putting out a preprint in public (basically the
paper slightly modified), and anything really good is often duplicated
elsewhere. There are some gems behind the digital library paywall, but google
scholar is really good at sniffing out free links. At any rate, I totally
agree that the Digital Library should be a force for good and only openness
can accomplish that goal. Most new papers are openly available (authors have
to pay more, however), but that isn't good enough.

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Phelinofist
"Your IP Address has been blocked - Please contact dl-support@acm.org" :(

After just 100 DLs. Does anyone know whether I really have to write a mail or
will the block get lifted after x hours?

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cjensen
They gave you access to read... not to download and read later. So no shock
you got blocked.

IMHO as a life-long ACM member... library access should be permanently free.
But that's clearly not what they have chosen to do.

~~~
nerpderp82
Hell, I used to get blocked just for opening 8 papers in new tabs. Getting
blocked after a 100 paper bender is pretty good luck!

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mkchoi212
This is awesome! Great decision by the folks at ACM! well done guys!!

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carldaddy
Is ACM membership useful for just typical developers not in research or grad
school?

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kabdib
I joined the ACM in college. I found the library pretty useful as a "typical
developer" and took good advantage of the free access that my employers
provided. I paid for ACM library access out of my own pocket when I left for a
smaller company, but let it lapse a couple years ago when I realized that most
of the papers I was reading were also available elsewhere, and that the
journals I was following no longer had as many compelling papers.

(Reading papers on a regular basis is something that I encourage developers
and managers to do; it's a good way to expand your toolkit and get ideas for
different ways to solve things. A paper a week -- maybe an hour a week, on
average -- and that's like fifty new things you've been exposed to in a year.
These add up, and eventually can make a big difference in how you approach
problems).

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pinewurst
I'm really hoping they'll open IEEE journals as well.

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cordite
Now their fancy js pages don't load

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warvair
"... if that really is your name."

