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IEEE President's Note: Why Students Should Stay with IEEE

spectrum.ieee.org

31–40 of 56 posts

Re: IEEE President's Note: Why Students Should Stay with IEEE

#31
post #20

You have to work hard and come up with new ideas better than anyone else in the world, and demonstrate that. Then IEEE asks A review the work of B and B review the work of A for free. If the work is good, IEEE will ask you to transfer your rights to your intellectual property to IEEE, and sometimes pay on top of that too. Of course, you have to pay exorbitant fees to present it. Lastly, you can’t download your own pa…

Each scientific kingdom has the same. Chemistry has ACS for example, that even has secret agreements with university libraries (at the request of ACS not the librarians but they have no choice but to sign if they want the services).

Re: IEEE President's Note: Why Students Should Stay with IEEE

#32
This is sickening to the core. IEEE charges people who submit their work FOR FREE, ann entire $2,000 to let people access their work!

Want to help your career? Publish in a venue that doesn’t charge a ransom to get your name out there. That will actually help your career.

What a fraud.

https://open.ieee.org/for-authors/article-processing-charges...

Re: IEEE President's Note: Why Students Should Stay with IEEE

#33

A 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...

That seems to be a small minority in software. 2% of Github repos are Unlicense licensed, 16% are something else I don't know and for everything else, the authors have chosen to use copyright to restrict how others can use it in some way, even if it's just keeping their name on it.

[1] https://github.blog/open-source/open-source-license-usage-on...

Re: IEEE President's Note: Why Students Should Stay with IEEE

#34
post #25
post #21

IEEE 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 p…

> several people canceled their membership in disgust

Looks like nothing of value was lost.

Ukraine already gets 99.99% of airtime. Two Russian researchers -- not army generals or politicians, mind you -- were given a chance to describe the problems the conflict has created for their side, and we're supposed to pretend that those problems do not exist and their struggle doesn't matter because somebody else has it worse.

There's this thing called "journalism" where you're supposed to be given raw facts from all sides with as little interpretation (i.e. propaganda) as possible, and think for yourself. It used to be more common back in the day, though maybe not much. Now we only want to hear things that closely follow our own narrative, and ignore everything else. It's easier to live this way, I understand.

Re: IEEE President's Note: Why Students Should Stay with IEEE

#35
post #20

You have to work hard and come up with new ideas better than anyone else in the world, and demonstrate that. Then IEEE asks A review the work of B and B review the work of A for free. If the work is good, IEEE will ask you to transfer your rights to your intellectual property to IEEE, and sometimes pay on top of that too. Of course, you have to pay exorbitant fees to present it. Lastly, you can’t download your own pa…

> Academia always seemed to be a fraud in some ways.

In the western world at least, it's the last surviving guild-like institution. The industrial revolution and liberalization (free markets) obviated other such institutions.

Re: IEEE President's Note: Why Students Should Stay with IEEE

#36
post #20

You have to work hard and come up with new ideas better than anyone else in the world, and demonstrate that. Then IEEE asks A review the work of B and B review the work of A for free. If the work is good, IEEE will ask you to transfer your rights to your intellectual property to IEEE, and sometimes pay on top of that too. Of course, you have to pay exorbitant fees to present it. Lastly, you can’t download your own pa…

I hope we see more open and transparent alternatives take over these legacy systems. There's no reason to keep paying these useless middlemen so much money.

Re: IEEE President's Note: Why Students Should Stay with IEEE

#37

In summary, "Give us your money. I promise we provide some benefit". As engineers, they should at least provide some data with this claim. A chart would be nice.

"some benefit" meaning, you can hang out with other people who also paid to be there.

Re: IEEE President's Note: Why Students Should Stay with IEEE

#38
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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.

Isn't your library covering IEEE access?

Re: IEEE President's Note: Why Students Should Stay with IEEE

#39

Earlier 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…

You read papers and learn where the edge of the science is.

Of course you do; and thats where a lot of the papers are locked up, behind IEEE/ACM/Science/Nature, other journals. I guess that's a huge reason to stay involved, if nothing more to access the different subgroups, both for journals and papers. There is often no other place, in my experience, to access that level of information and knowledge. And especially if you wish to publish, on the edge, yourself.

Re: IEEE President's Note: Why Students Should Stay with IEEE

#40
post #30
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 h…

In the past I wouldn't go to IEEE for IT and CS, except maybe, possibly for the physical level; that's the ACMs bailiwick. I had the distinct fortunate/unfortunate to be an absolute crossover, but could afford neither exsxcept when in pharma where they staffed their own libraries (from necessity), and paid for access.
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