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ACM costs vs. arxiv.org costs

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Re: ACM costs vs. arxiv.org costs

#71

Post by Athas »

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…

I think all of the ACM conferences I contribute to have stopped actually printing physical proceedings. The consistent formatting is by a LaTeX document class, with an automated system that checks for bad fonts, text going into the margin, etc. The PDF that ends up in the Digital Library is the one the author submits (possibly with a watermark or stamp applied). I don't know if there is a small amount of ACM-provided human labour employed somewhere, but mostly they just provide a small amount of automation.

Re: ACM costs vs. arxiv.org costs

#73

Post by jph00 »

redis_mlc wrote: post #72

For those who are trying to follow the money, often organizations like these have expensive old-school benefits like defined-benefit pension plans.

Following the money is an excellent plan!

I haven't heard anything about defined-benefit pension plans, or their use in professional societies. Could you say a bit more? Or provide a link to learn more?

Re: ACM costs vs. arxiv.org costs

#74

Post by mkl »

zozbot234 wrote: post #5

Is arxiv.org mirrored on archive.org? The latter has its Wayback Machine of course, but that might not necessarily follow .ps and .pdf links.

They do provide bulk access [1], so I'm sure there will be backups. The numbers on that page are quite out of date, so I'm not sure it's current.

[1] https://arxiv.org/help/bulk_data_s3

Re: ACM costs vs. arxiv.org costs

#75

Post by mkl »

thanatropism wrote: post #46
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}

I prefer \newcommand{\intd}{\,\mathrm{d}} to separate it a little.

Re: ACM costs vs. arxiv.org costs

#76

Post by Someone »

denzil_correa wrote: post #13
jph00 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They don't pay for peer review. I'm not sure you mean by "professionally managed" or "edited" exactly - or why that would cost over $100m. (Disclaimer: I wrote the tweet. Although I didn't expect it to appear on HN...)

Thanks Jeremy for highlighting this issue. A lot of scientific publishers have hijacked "Open Access" to charge high fees for the same publication as before and pocket more money. For example, "Springer Blood Cancer Journal" charges $ 4,580 as OA fees. I can't imagine how one can rationalize that cost.

PLOS ONE’s fee is $1,595. A factor of 3 doesn’t seem inexplainable to me. That’s “Springer Nature Blood Cancer Journal”, so factors of 1½ in “better editing”, “older, less efficient systems” and “fewer publications/year, so lower efficiency of scale” could already do it.

Also, is Nature working on digitizing old content? That can be costly (I remember reading somewhere that it could involve a) finding a library that has a copy and b) flying there to photograph it) and that’s a cost PLOS won’t ever have.

Re: ACM costs vs. arxiv.org costs

#77

Post by lultimouomo »

denzil_correa wrote: post #13
jph00 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They don't pay for peer review. I'm not sure you mean by "professionally managed" or "edited" exactly - or why that would cost over $100m. (Disclaimer: I wrote the tweet. Although I didn't expect it to appear on HN...)

Thanks Jeremy for highlighting this issue. A lot of scientific publishers have hijacked "Open Access" to charge high fees for the same publication as before and pocket more money. For example, "Springer Blood Cancer Journal" charges $ 4,580 as OA fees. I can't imagine how one can rationalize that cost.

It's quite clear how you can rationalize it:

* to advance your career you need to publish in certain specific journals

* 5 grand is a reasonable amount of money to advance your career

therefore:

* it is reasonable to pay 5 grands to publish on such a journal

Re: ACM costs vs. arxiv.org costs

#78

Post by denzil_correa »

murkt wrote: post #63
jph00 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They don't pay for peer review. I'm not sure you mean by "professionally managed" or "edited" exactly - or why that would cost over $100m. (Disclaimer: I wrote the tweet. Although I didn't expect it to appear on HN...)

They probably mean administration of a peer review. Someone has to find a suitable reviewer, which can be a bit time-consuming task [1], write to reviewers, just do all the coordination. [1] There are now tools that automate and speed up finding peer reviewers, though, like https://www.prophy.science/referee-finder

> Someone has to find a suitable reviewer, which can be a bit time-consuming task [1], write to reviewers, just do all the coordination.

This is done by the Program Chairs of the conference who are professors at universities. ACM doesn't do or pay anything for it.

Re: ACM costs vs. arxiv.org costs

#79

Post by Certhas »

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…

We don't need to speculate how much it costs to run a world class journal. The cost above arxiv is 15$ per Submission:

https://gowers.wordpress.com/2016/03/01/discrete-analysis-la...

IEEE charges 1700$+

Re: ACM costs vs. arxiv.org costs

#80

Post by mhh__ »

aspaceman wrote: post #68
mhh__ wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just clicked it and downloaded the paper? (I agree with you just possibly a poor example)

Clicked at home and got the paywall. Pretty sure you're on a network with access.

Spooky! That makes sense.

Wouldn't have known because I've been (ummm...) "Acquiring" (libgen) them elsewhere

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