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Matt Blaze: How ACM and IEEE Shake Down Science

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Re: Matt Blaze: How ACM and IEEE Shake Down Science

#31

Post by pbiggar »

neutronicus wrote: post #12
MichaelSalib wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand, a well run, professionally edited journal costs money to produce. Does it cost more money to produce than Wikipedia? As I understand it, editors generally work for free. Reviewers generally work for free. Authors either work for free or pay for the privilege of publishing. Heck, authors generally supply their work already typeset. So what exactly is the cost here? I mean, I'm sure that IEEE/ACM hav…

Authors either work for free or pay for the privilege of publishing. I don't know where you get this. IEEE/ACM may not be paying them, but they are sure as hell getting paid to write the papers that go in those journals. Does it cost more money to produce than Wikipedia? The difference being that there are only 4 or 5 people in the world capable of producing or verifying the articles that appear in scientific journal…

> I don't know where you get this. IEEE/ACM may not be paying them, but they are sure as hell getting paid to write the papers that go in those journals.

I'd like to know where you get this. ACM is paying nobody for writing papers. (I've published in ACM journals and conferences, btw).

Re: Matt Blaze: How ACM and IEEE Shake Down Science

#32

Post by bedris »

The National Institutes of Health (NIH), which funds approximately one third of all biomedical research in the USA [1], requires that all peer-reviewed manuscripts that arise from NIH funds be submitted within 12 months of acceptance to a journal to a digital archive, PubMed Central, where the articles can be freely and publicly accessed [2].

[1] http://www.medpagetoday.com/PublicHealthPolicy/HealthPolicy/...

[2] http://publicaccess.nih.gov/

Re: Matt Blaze: How ACM and IEEE Shake Down Science

#33

Post by gcb »

neilc wrote: post #24

I thought this was obvious to everyone? ACM, IEEE, and the rest of the scientific publishing establishment are antiquated dinosaurs. They will eventually adapt to the existence of the Internet. Thankfully, in CS, they are mostly just a nuisance -- access to the scientific literature in other fields is significantly less open. To be fair to IEEE, the ACM's official policy is at least as bad. Actually, the ACM are a li…

The tricky is to remember that an exact copy of the article can be called pre-published version by the author and nobody can say it isn't.

and if you are very afraid, you can just remove or add one meaningless coma. that should get you covered.

disclaimer: i'm not an IP lawyer. Also I do not subscribe to ancient extortion business models like ACM

Re: Matt Blaze: How ACM and IEEE Shake Down Science

#34

Post by bedris »

MichaelSalib wrote: post #7
drallison wrote: post #2

Matt Blaze is right on point, as usual; in fact, he probably does not go far enough in his critique of scientific publishing. Commercial publishers from Nature to those on the long tail are as bad or worse. The "in your face" commercial paywall in front of most technical journals is a frequent user experience here on Hacker News. And counterproductive to doing good science and engineering. If the free exchange of inf…

On the other hand, a well run, professionally edited journal costs money to produce. Does it cost more money to produce than Wikipedia? As I understand it, editors generally work for free. Reviewers generally work for free. Authors either work for free or pay for the privilege of publishing. Heck, authors generally supply their work already typeset. So what exactly is the cost here? I mean, I'm sure that IEEE/ACM hav…

In addition, professionally edited journals frequently have feature/news stories and research highlights, which require staff to select relevant topics and to write and edit the articles. Also, journals can have advertisements for products or for open academic and faculty positions, which require curation and communication with the entities posting the products for sale or jobs for hire. These things require money in the form of paying staff.

Re: Matt Blaze: How ACM and IEEE Shake Down Science

#35

Post by _delirium »

patio11 wrote: post #29
logjam wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've had several peer-reviewed papers published. The reviewers (who are unpaid) often have excellent suggestions and often do the work of an editor. However, I have NEVER had an editor or other paid staff of a journal offer ANY assistance on the manuscript whatsoever, to include stuff I'd ordinarily think an editor would do as part of the job: edit. In talking with my colleagues, their experience is the same. I'm not…

The ACM, which is publishing an article by me, offered extensive editing, mostly to help me hit their desired tone. (The article was adapted from something I wrote outside of my academic "voice.")

Was it in one of the more "magazine-style" publications, like ACM Queue or CACM? I believe those have a more active editorial staff, as compared to stuff like ACM Transactions on Graphics, which requires authors to prepare a publication-ready PDF, with no ACM-provided editing or formatting assistance.

My only personal experience with editorial "assistance" is with an IEEE journal, which totally messed up one of my articles in a way I didn't notice until it had gotten published. They had moved the "related work" section to a sidebar inset, and since I'd read that section a million times I just assumed it was the same (in new location) and didn't read it closely again. Turns out they helpfully reorganized some of the references and discussion of them, so it no longer made much sense, and even had newly introduced grammatical errors.

Re: Matt Blaze: How ACM and IEEE Shake Down Science

#36

Post by anonymous246 »

anonymous246 wrote: post #27

I suggest he run for office on a platform of changing the policy. I'm sure he'll win.

Dear downvoter, in case it wasn't clear, the IEEE and ACM both have elected officials. I was suggesting he run for office within the IEEE or ACM, not for public office. Thanks.

Re: Matt Blaze: How ACM and IEEE Shake Down Science

#37

Post by davidwparker »

praptak wrote: post #26

Hint: I never had any problems obtaining a scientific paper by directly contacting its author. Many of the papers are directly downloadable from author's pages.

Matt mentions that in his write-up, but then mentions that the IEEE is changing its status of allowing uploads on author's pages:

Some time in January, the IEEE apparently quietly revised its copyright policy to explicitly forbid us authors from sharing the "final" versions of our papers on the web

Re: Matt Blaze: How ACM and IEEE Shake Down Science

#38

Post by scott_s »

_delirium wrote: post #35
patio11 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ACM, which is publishing an article by me, offered extensive editing, mostly to help me hit their desired tone. (The article was adapted from something I wrote outside of my academic "voice.")

Was it in one of the more "magazine-style" publications, like ACM Queue or CACM ? I believe those have a more active editorial staff, as compared to stuff like ACM Transactions on Graphics , which requires authors to prepare a publication-ready PDF, with no ACM-provided editing or formatting assistance. My only personal experience with editorial "assistance" is with an IEEE journal, which totally messed up one of my…

I have published in ACM and IEEE conferences, as well as had an article in IEEE Computer. The experiences are very different. The conference paper was all us - formatting, editing, everything. The article in Computer we had multiple iterations with a professional editor whose job was to maintain a consistent "voice" throughout the publication.

Re: Matt Blaze: How ACM and IEEE Shake Down Science

#39

Post by caf »

bedris wrote: post #34
MichaelSalib wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand, a well run, professionally edited journal costs money to produce. Does it cost more money to produce than Wikipedia? As I understand it, editors generally work for free. Reviewers generally work for free. Authors either work for free or pay for the privilege of publishing. Heck, authors generally supply their work already typeset. So what exactly is the cost here? I mean, I'm sure that IEEE/ACM hav…

In addition, professionally edited journals frequently have feature/news stories and research highlights, which require staff to select relevant topics and to write and edit the articles. Also, journals can have advertisements for products or for open academic and faculty positions, which require curation and communication with the entities posting the products for sale or jobs for hire. These things require money in…

Well, if those feature/news stories and research highlight articles can't economically stand on their own, then perhaps they're not a good use of resources and shouldn't be produced?

And if the advertisements aren't bringing in at least enough revenue to cover their own costs, then they shouldn't be included either.

Re: Matt Blaze: How ACM and IEEE Shake Down Science

#40

Post by larsberg »

Lewisham wrote: post #28
krschultz wrote: post #20

Most white papers are written by professors and students who are supported by grants. These grants generally come from DARPA, the NSF, or other federal programs. All that money comes from the taxpayers. Yet as a taxpayer, I still have to buy the papers from a journal. A journal that hasn't funded the research, but profits from it. A) What a cushy gig, I wish I had invented a professional society B) This is an issue w…

This is the most aggravating part of it for me (I'm a PhD student who has stuff in the ACM library); I'm paid for by the NSF, but my understanding is that the NSF does not require the papers to be freely available. I think there may be some countries/grants that do force open the publications they funded. The problem is systemic, and will only be changed by direct, large-scale intervention. Fortunately, the US govern…

As another PhD student, I don't really get all of the rage. In practice, everything post-1997 is easily accessible, and if you're searching through CiteseerX you probably won't even notice the difference. I won't claim it's a great system, but there is observational equivalence with "free and unencumbered publication" modulo a 3" x 4" blurb of text on the lower-left of the first page of the document.

Except for a select few Springer-Verlag publications (mainly the more book-chapter-like ones).

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