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ACM costs vs. arxiv.org costs

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Re: ACM costs vs. arxiv.org costs

#41

Post by cowsandmilk »

Rochus wrote: post #31

Isn't this a typical case of Parkinson's law? See e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkinson%27s_law (didn't find a free version of the book unfortunately). There is even a fitting example in the book where Parkinson describes how the administration of the British Navy became bigger and bigger although there were fewer and fewer ships to manage. In the present case, one would have to assume analogously that with th…

> have ACM and the other mentioned organizations already reached the tertiary and last stage of INJELITITIS?

Frankly, ACM membership and publication is a good deal compared to many other societies. For $200 annual dues, you get unlimited access to all journals.

Contrast to the American Chemical Society. For $175, you get:

1) Access to 50 articles for 48 hours 2) The right to purchase access to additional articles at $12 a pop for 48 hour access.

You want to look at the article again after 48 hours? Pay up again.

[0] https://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/membership/member-benefit...

Re: ACM costs vs. arxiv.org costs

#42

Post by fock »

and except for simple formalities, Arxiv isn't reviewed, typeset or anything else, which a normal journal usually entails (and typesetting costs... hands up, who is doing all the integral d-s in mathrm...). And yet people cite Arxiv often blindly...

Re: ACM costs vs. arxiv.org costs

#43

Post by Vinnl »

chrisseaton wrote: post #33
elehack wrote: post #26

There's a lot to critique in publishing and associated costs, but this tweet is unfortunately factually wrong. From the linked article, ACM's publication costs are $10.9M, not $33.7M. One of the ACM's major publication initiatives over the last 3-5 years has been an overhaul of their publication templates and publication workflow, to ensure greater consistency in publication formatting, improve accessibility, and arc…

> their publication templates and publication workflow, to ensure greater consistency in publication formatting, improve accessibility, and archive publications in more future-proof formats Publication workflow, formatting and accessibility? For every paper I’ve done I just send the ACM a final PDF produced myself from a LaTeX template that hasn’t changed in years. What’s the workflow for taking an already final PDF…

I'm not sure how it works at ACM, but often, it's people retyping the contents of your article into a JATS-XML template and adding additional metadata (authors, date of publication, perhaps who funded it, etc.), which is then used to generate several outputs (e.g. PDF, HTML, but also citation lists, etc.).

Re: ACM costs vs. arxiv.org costs

#44

Post by [deleted] »

FireBeyond wrote: post #34
DoofusOfDeath wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FYI to save people some Googling... I thought "Pancake" was an auto-correct mistake, because I'd never heard that surname before. But it really is the ACM president's surname.

Around here in the emergency medicine field we have a Norma Pancake and a Dr Waffle.

[deleted]

Re: ACM costs vs. arxiv.org costs

#45

Post by mturmon »

chrisseaton wrote: post #36
tensor wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to defend the price differential, but someone has to solicit reviewers and manage the review process. This is going to roughly track the number of submissions and isn't free.

> someone has to solicit reviewers and manage the review process Lol that’s done by volunteer community members as well. It literally is free to the ACM (but the people are paid to do it by their institutions as part of their jobs.)

Your lol is misinformed. ACM and IEEE produce and print actual dead-tree journals. This means selecting a fixed number of articles which are consistently formatted by an editorial process. Additionally, [edited to qualify: some but not all] IEEE Associate Editors are paid positions. Arxiv is not doing this.

We can argue/debate about what is the value-add (and precise workflow difference) of the IEEE editorial process vs. arxiv, but there is a difference.

Like the comment you responded to, I'm not defending the precise differential. I'm a past IEEE member (and author, and reviewer) and found their membership fees excessive.

Re: ACM costs vs. arxiv.org costs

#46

Post by thanatropism »

fock wrote: post #42

and except for simple formalities, Arxiv isn't reviewed, typeset or anything else, which a normal journal usually entails (and typesetting costs... hands up, who is doing all the integral d-s in mathrm...). And yet people cite Arxiv often blindly...

\renewcommand{\d}{\mathrm d}

Re: ACM costs vs. arxiv.org costs

#47

Post by chrisseaton »

Vinnl wrote: post #43
chrisseaton wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> their publication templates and publication workflow, to ensure greater consistency in publication formatting, improve accessibility, and archive publications in more future-proof formats Publication workflow, formatting and accessibility? For every paper I’ve done I just send the ACM a final PDF produced myself from a LaTeX template that hasn’t changed in years. What’s the workflow for taking an already final PDF…

I'm not sure how it works at ACM, but often, it's people retyping the contents of your article into a JATS-XML template and adding additional metadata (authors, date of publication, perhaps who funded it, etc.), which is then used to generate several outputs (e.g. PDF, HTML, but also citation lists, etc.).

> people retyping the contents of your article

Wow. Well I can imagine that’s expensive.

Re: ACM costs vs. arxiv.org costs

#48

Post by ringzero »

b215826 wrote: post #30
denzil_correa wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This post makes no sense. ArXiv is a site to which papers are posted. ACM and IEEE are technical societies with a range of publications professionally managed, peer reviewed, and edited I have been a reviewer of many ACM, Elsevier etc. conferences. The reviewers, editors don't get any money for their service. Regardless, "professional management" is not a sufficient argument for 33x / 190x the price difference . IE…

It's not just about professional management. I suspect IEEE and ACM have much more complicated infrastructure to handle submission, peer review, production, etc., which arXiv doesn't have. I'm not justifying the costs -- I wouldn't be able to do that unless I see the breakdown of costs, e.g., how much it goes to the society, how much it goes to post-production, etc. I would also assume that ACM and IEEE journals also…

> I suspect IEEE and ACM have much more complicated infrastructure to handle submission, peer review, production, etc.,

To the tune of a hundred million dollars? I can’t even remotely imagine how. If someone asked you to design a system to do all of those above things, would you actually come to the conclusion it’d cost a cool hundred mil yearly to operate?

Re: ACM costs vs. arxiv.org costs

#49

Post by chrisseaton »

mturmon wrote: post #45
chrisseaton wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> someone has to solicit reviewers and manage the review process Lol that’s done by volunteer community members as well. It literally is free to the ACM (but the people are paid to do it by their institutions as part of their jobs.)

Your lol is misinformed. ACM and IEEE produce and print actual dead-tree journals. This means selecting a fixed number of articles which are consistently formatted by an editorial process. Additionally, [edited to qualify: some but not all] IEEE Associate Editors are paid positions. Arxiv is not doing this. We can argue/debate about what is the value-add (and precise workflow difference) of the IEEE editorial process…

> Your lol is misinformed.

In every ACM review committee I’ve participated in, it’s just volunteer members of the community emailing other other and using open source software to coordinate reviews.

Re: ACM costs vs. arxiv.org costs

#50

Post by Rochus »

cowsandmilk wrote: post #41
Rochus wrote: post #31

Isn't this a typical case of Parkinson's law? See e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkinson%27s_law (didn't find a free version of the book unfortunately). There is even a fitting example in the book where Parkinson describes how the administration of the British Navy became bigger and bigger although there were fewer and fewer ships to manage. In the present case, one would have to assume analogously that with th…

> have ACM and the other mentioned organizations already reached the tertiary and last stage of INJELITITIS? Frankly, ACM membership and publication is a good deal compared to many other societies. For $200 annual dues, you get unlimited access to all journals. Contrast to the American Chemical Society. For $175, you get: 1) Access to 50 articles for 48 hours 2) The right to purchase access to additional articles at…

Well, that was not the argument. I agree, there are much greedier organizations around. However, this does not answer the question why the operation of these organisations is so expensive compared to their services. Parkinson has a good explanation though ;-)
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