
IEEE: Pay $3000 and we'll remove your article's paywall. - blickly
http://www.theinstitute.ieee.org/portal/site/tionline/menuitem.be4d708ccca114d8fb2275875bac26c8/index.jsp?&pName=print_only&TheCat=2201&article=tionline/legacy/inst2011/mar11/featureopenaccess.xml
======
grsites
This kind of gouging soon won't be a problem anymore. I'm in the process of
creating an online service (launch date sometime this summer) that will
provide completely free full-text access to _all_ academic journals in one
fell swoop. Think Napster for academic research.

I won't give implementation details for now, and I'm still evaluating
different domain names, but it will be called Acropolis.

Yes, I know it will create a legal shitstorm, but I feel it's a small price to
pay for what is at stake. To hell with it. Academic research is supposed to be
free.

~~~
pedrocr
The problem that needs to be solved isn't distribution, it's how to transition
the traditional model of peer-review into one with much less overhead.
Building a web app to allow researchers to submit their articles and have them
peer-reviewed by other researchers would be an interesting project that could
actually disrupt the industry. I don't think things like arXiv do that yet.

Your project seems disruptive and may cause people to talk about the issue but
it doesn't solve anything, as it just undermines the system that is producing
the very journals you are exposing. The same way Napster didn't solve the
dependency between musicians and outdated industry business models, it just
exposed how the models were outdated.

~~~
bertil
We've seen Zotero and Mendeley trying to offer a platform for that
(unconvincingly if you ask me); from mass adoption of those, points for good
comments can be awarded to incite proper behaviour (reddit, HNews and Quora
are here to attest it works, and abuses and their proper correction are well
typed); I'm expecting the Livfe extention of Mekentojs' Paper 2 to come closer
to something usable.

~~~
MrGunn
Hey, I work for Mendeley, so I can comment on a few things. Commenters here
have noticed that it's the lamentable reliance on journal prestige that is
keeping this whole dysfunctional system held together. The good news is that
there are a number of smart people working on alternative metrics for papers
(and for datasets and code as well) which focus on reuse, basically an
extension of citation. Mendeley helps because we can collect and display some
of these stats back to the academics who use our service. Not only does this
allow research to proceed much faster by radically shortening the feedback
cycle, but it provides a possibility that as the alt metrics get better uptake
and respect, the lack of a suitable IF won't be a barrier anymore.

------
inetsee
I have a counter-suggestion: pay $3000 to support one of the open access
journals (see The Directory of Open Access Journals
"[http://www.doaj.org/doaj?func=home&uiLanguage=en](http://www.doaj.org/doaj?func=home&uiLanguage=en)
for suggestions) and they'll let you post as many articles as you want. (Of
course, I believe most of them will let you post for free, but by contributing
articles and money to open access journals, you get to stick it to IEEE
twice).

~~~
ebiester
So... how is the tenure committee going to do with the fact that you have
nothing in peer-reviewed journals?

~~~
bertil
All the journals in the list linked are peer-reviewed. We would all appreciate
if you could keep your purposely misinformed snide out of academia.

------
sh1mmer
It would have made more sense if it wasn't called a "processing fee". That
implies they can justify the cost with specific work associated with making a
paper available.

~~~
Lewisham
I would be happier if IEEE/ACM would typeset the damn articles. The
International Conference of Software Engineering this year has hired a
publishing company that have been sending manuscripts back for even the
slightest failure to meet (their interpretation of) the ACM style guide.

I've gone through the process 4 or 5 times across multiple papers.

You can't charge $3000 for the benefit of putting a PDF on a website when you
do absolutely nothing for the creation of it. If they did the typesetting
themselves, I might ( _might_ ) accept that there are some costs per article,
but at this point it's obviously complete nonsense on similar old-world scales
as the NYT's $41m pay wall. Putting PDFs up is a fixed cost, which, even
amortized over the development of the site, is nowhere near $3000 per article
over and above the revenue they are receiving from libraries and memberships.

We keep getting told that there are overheads in running a journal; that open-
access can't work without significant investiture. I disagree. When all you
are doing is facilitating communication (academics do essentially everything
for free: write, typeset, review, accept/reject, organize conferences, and new
things like storing source code and data for replicability like PROMISE or
SIGMOD), you are just a middleman. All that's being provided at this point is
"authority" because ACM/IEEE-stamped articles count towards tenure, and the
rest don't (at least in CompSci).

This sort of thing is ripe for disruption: a competently written web app could
annihilate the processes that are in place. The only problem is selling the
authority. A company like Google or Microsoft Research taking to the right
people and bringing them on-board for a rival publication/conference would do
that (MSR are actually quite well-versed in doing conferences, the Foundations
of Digital Games conference started with them, and that's now ACM for
authority). I think most academics are totally fed up with the status quo, so
I can't imagine that's all that hard, you just need the money to have a
dedicated person to do all the "selling."

------
kilburn
From the website:

 _"Open access can coexist with traditional publishing. IEEE will continue to
allow authors to post manuscripts of their articles accepted by IEEE journals
on their own Web sites or those of their employers."_

Hence, it would be perfectly fine for me to publish on IEEE journals.
Basically, if you want to read one of my articles you just have to look for it
using google scholar. Is it that difficult?

~~~
Lewisham
...but remember this is only because they have no choice. IEEE/ACM would
_love_ to remove these clauses, but they've realized if they do, that's going
to be the match that lights the fuse for all-out academic rebellion. It's not
like that's a gift or some evidence that they are in any way reasonable.

They're totally aware of the precipitous situation they're in, they just don't
want to/don't have the competency to fix their monetization strategy.

~~~
alexqgb
The fact that they're "granting you permission" to post your own paper, which
you wrote at your own expense (or that of supporters you secured independently
from the IEEE), and in which they have no legitimate copyright claim on your
own website just underscores how dangerously close to the wind these guys are
really sailing.

Unless they're actually bribing tenure committees to maintain their exclusive
(and totally unearned) hold on people's professional futures, it seems like
they're one coordinated action away from a richly-deserved implosion.

------
elouise
they think scholars have enough money to do the research AND pay $3000 to have
it openly published?

it's the beginning of the end of closed academic publishing models.

~~~
naish
I certainly do not. It is usually enough of a challenge to cover "overpage"
charges that publishers charge when an accepted article runs over the
"standard" length (usually 8 pages for a standard or regular article). Often
times, the "extra" pages are introduced by additional text required to satisfy
reviewers. One time I was requested to convert an 8 page article submitted as
a regular paper into a short paper format (4 page limit), while adding a
significant amount of new content. The result? A 7 page article that ended up
costing $575 to publish. We won't even talk about charges for colour figures,
which can run into the thousands.

Of course the money spent on overpage charges could be better spent on
graduate student stipends, equipment purchases and maintenance, software
licensing, attending conferences, and other expenses incurred by an active
research program.

Other open journals, while still expensive, charge significantly less than
what the IEEE is proposing. The challenge for academics is that, at least for
now, IEEE journals are well regarded, well cited and considered to be a
prestigious venue for publication.

~~~
MrGunn
The idea here is that the tend of thousands your library is paying now could
be used to offset your costs to go the "Gold OA" route. With this discussion
of fees, I have to point out that the majority of OA journals don't charge any
fees at all, and of those that do their fees are generally comparable to the
page charges you'd be paying at a non-OA journal.

It's only a rare few, like these guys, Nature Publishing, and a few others
that charge so much. PLoS charges about half that.

------
Mythrl
I don't understand the criticism leveled at organizations like IEEE although
maybe I'm missing something. These are professional organizations and
consequently non-profits. So even though they charge a lot to access the
articles, it implies that nobody is actually getting rich off this.

Edit: I know that there are some for profit publishing houses, but there are
also many journals published by non-profits (IEEE being one of them).

~~~
alexqgb
Also, "non-profit" only refers to the tax status of the organization. The fact
that the organization employs management that may be grossly overcompensated
is left unmentioned. In any case, the relationship is likely to be highly -
and personally - profitable for the people running it.

------
guan
$3,000 may be too much, but I basically like this idea. Isn’t the whole
premise of (peer-reviewed) open access that authors would pay fees sufficient
to cover the cost of publishing and peer review, so libraries aren’t ripped
off by publishers? This is at least how PLoS and other leading open access
journals I’ve heard of work.

If $3,000 is a ripoff, authors would refuse to pay and will pressure IEEE to
reduce prices or take their business elsewhere, which has happened in a number
of fields where open access journals have sprung up. Having libraries pay the
publisher is not as effective for cost control.

Maybe peer review or even journals should die? I don’t quite agree, but if
it’s true, having authors pay is probably the best way of bringing this about.

------
andrewcurioso
This is very topical for me. I have been drafting a paper that I was hoping to
submit to the IEEE. This "might" change my mind. I'm not sure yet. There are
stipulations that you can publish your work on personal sites if you get
permission from the organization and you include a copyright notice at the
top.

Incidentally, they also have an optional but suggested charge for papers
containing color diagrams and over-length papers. They say that an
organization should include publication costs in their budget for the research
and thus the fees are reasonable.

The author guidelines, are dozens of pages long and I only had a week to
absorb them so correct me if I missed something.

~~~
Lewisham
_Incidentally, they also have an optional but suggested charge for papers
containing color diagrams and over-length papers._

These are wonderful holdovers from when people read papers in actual printed
copies. When's the last time you read a paper from a printed copy from the
publisher? That's why they're "optional" (and roundly ignored, AFAIK). It's
another example of their completely outdated monetization methods.

------
davidu
"hybrid open access"

 _Bullshit_

What you mean is "not open access." Don't lie to us.

