IEEE Spectrum used to be good. I don't know whether it still is. Does anyone know?
IEEE President's Note: Why Students Should Stay with IEEE
21–30 of 56 posts
Re: IEEE President's Note: Why Students Should Stay with IEEE
#22I have mixed feelings about this. I joined IEEE as a student for purposes of publications and getting discounts on conference rates. I have continued my membership mainly because it's common among my professional peers. There are some benefits. However, I have received more spam and unwanted mail (both electronic and physical) from IEEE than any other organization I've been a part of. I find it ironic that I am essen…
What kind of benefits do you find valuable?
I'm still in academia, and IEEE runs quite a few high-quality / top-tier journals and conferences in my research area (TAC, TRO, RA-L, LCSS, ACC, CDC, etc.) I'm a part of the control systems society, and their Controls Systems Magazine is a good read. On the perhaps more trivial side an Overleaf professional subscription was included with my membership.
So again, there are benefits. But I am frustrated that I'm being advertised to and having my data sold to third-party companies after paying over $200 per year for a membership. I also have issues with journal paywalls, but this is slowly changing as open access journals become more common.
Re: IEEE President's Note: Why Students Should Stay with IEEE
#23I cancelled my IEEE membership years ago. I enjoyed their magazines and journals, but remember being frustrated at the time with their pricing. After I cancelled, they became aggressively spammy, and they are now on my shitlist. This President's Note seems to be more of the same.
The same here. Being a member for ca. 9 years. After they made IEEE Spectrum digital only and even badges digital only, I completly lost my interest due to high expenses and limited overall value. Those two little physical things were a real bond to IEEE.
Maybe it works for specialists in the narrow fields, but as I shifted from electronics to IT, I could not find real benefits for myself there, even in the "Computer" section.
Re: IEEE President's Note: Why Students Should Stay with IEEE
#24I keep mine because overall it saves me $50 on conference fees per year, I'd have cancelled it otherwise.
Re: IEEE President's Note: Why Students Should Stay with IEEE
#25IEEE Spectrum used to be good. I don't know whether it still is. Does anyone know?
It still is pretty good. That and the ACM CACM are my only subscriptions. I independently purchase the Spectrum only because I don't want to be associated with IEEE anymore.
My reasons of cancellation are less fiduciary and more of a policy. In 2022, IEEE published an interview of two Russian researchers and effect of the intellectual & economic blockade in Russian academia after Ukraine invasion started. It sought pleas for donation & help. Many people pointed out it was tone deaf since the ones really suffering were the Ukrainian academics who were dislocated or persecuted in their own land. IEEE never commented or retracted those interviews & several people canceled their membership in disgust.
I subscribe to Spectrum for about $50 through Omeda rather than continue giving IEEE additional membership fee. I know some part will be shared with IEEE, but I am minimizing this by conscious choice.
Re: IEEE President's Note: Why Students Should Stay with IEEE
#26A point of contention for me is the IEEE Code of Conduct [1] whose point 5.e. can be summarized as "I will not infringe the intellectual property of others". If you are critical of copyright itself (something not unusual among hackers) then the IEEE may not be the association for you.
[10 https://www.ieee.org/about/corporate/governance/code-of-cond...
Re: IEEE President's Note: Why Students Should Stay with IEEE
#27A point of contention for me is the IEEE Code of Conduct [1] whose point 5.e. can be summarized as "I will not infringe the intellectual property of others". If you are critical of copyright itself (something not unusual among hackers) then the IEEE may not be the association for you. [10 https://www.ieee.org/about/corporate/governance/code-of-cond...
Intellectual property, more like imaginary property.
Re: IEEE President's Note: Why Students Should Stay with IEEE
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm truly interested in your thoughts... where would you discover truly hard problems? What do you feel would make you qualified to work on them, over, say someone else? enough to prove it to someone that could authorize such a salary and expenditure of time? Unless you were self-funded, of course. I've always wondered where and how would you discover what the edge of the knowledge and science actually is, and stay a…
In academia this is typically accomplished through staying up-to-date with top tier journals and conferences. I would say this is one of the benefits of IEEE--they have quite a few high-quality venues. However, there are also plenty of top-tier venues that are not associated with IEEE.
Unfortunately, they also have plenty of low-quality venues that dilute the discoverability of the high-quality ones. Some orgs (Usenix for instance) hold to at least a decent standard across nearly all their research conferences, so I can better gauge the quality of a paper in a field I'm less familiar with based on whether it was accepted to a conference in that org. When it comes to IEEE, it seems like they'll let any low-quality journal or conference spring up with their brand as long as it brings in the cash.
Re: IEEE President's Note: Why Students Should Stay with IEEE
#29> For more than 40 years, IEEE has been a great place to build my personal brand and to create a valuable professional network. I know it can do the same for the next generation of engineers. If they have to make this case, it suggests some combination of 1) the organization doesn't actually provide these opportunities to most people, or 2) people don't actually care about this anyway. For me, this language is busine…
I'm truly interested in your thoughts... where would you discover truly hard problems? What do you feel would make you qualified to work on them, over, say someone else? enough to prove it to someone that could authorize such a salary and expenditure of time? Unless you were self-funded, of course. I've always wondered where and how would you discover what the edge of the knowledge and science actually is, and stay a…
> where would you discover truly hard problems?
You take simple problems and solve them in truly hard ways ;)
Re: IEEE President's Note: Why Students Should Stay with IEEE
#30I cancelled my IEEE membership years ago. I enjoyed their magazines and journals, but remember being frustrated at the time with their pricing. After I cancelled, they became aggressively spammy, and they are now on my shitlist. This President's Note seems to be more of the same.
The same here. Being a member for ca. 9 years. After they made IEEE Spectrum digital only and even badges digital only, I completly lost my interest due to high expenses and limited overall value. Those two little physical things were a real bond to IEEE. Maybe it works for specialists in the narrow fields, but as I shifted from electronics to IT, I could not find real benefits for myself there, even in the "Computer…
Yeah their offerings are not good on CS and IT. They have couple of good conference and journals in electronics. The member discounted rates are not that attractive though, and if your institution/company is paying, who cares? The real benefit is access to specific publications of a society. If I would be working for a big company with a unlimited access (for which they charge up hundreds of k$ per year) I wouldn't have been a member. I guess ot used to be important to be a senior member or fellow back in the day, but now nobody cares.