Why Does The IEEE Make It So Difficult To Access And Share Research?
from the hoarding-mentality dept
Matt points us to an article by Martin Rowe about the difficulty of accessing and sharing information and research published by the IEEE, which he finds to be a bit of a travesty, since the IEEE should be in the business of promoting technical knowledge. He describes how he found an interesting paper that he wanted to share with his readership, but that the IEEE forbids just reposting their content (a restriction he's fine with). Instead, though, he hoped that the author of the paper would post it publicly (rather than behind the IEEE's paywall) and let him link to it. The author agreed, but since the author wasn't a member of the IEEE, he didn't have a copy of the full paper (this part seems a bit odd -- you would think at some point the author would have a copy of his own paper). So Martin agreed to download a copy for the author of his own paper -- but the IEEE stamps it with Martin's name and says that it can't be used by anyone else.Of course, you can see what the IEEE is thinking. It wants to hoard the information in order to build up its membership ranks, fearing that if it made that information available, people would be less interested in becoming an IEEE member. I would argue that's rather short-sighted, and there are plenty of other ways the IEEE could make membership more valuable (member-only gathering, access to other members online, discounts on events/publications/etc.) while still making the papers it publishes free. In fact, by freeing up the content, and highlighting those other benefits, it could even make membership more valuable.
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Re:
Yet another reading comprehension fail for the Anti-Mike.
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Not really - it's the letters after your name they pay for.
- and usually you don't get full access to everything by joining anyway.
Journal access is mainly a convenience anyway - as you can always (in my experience) get the stuff some other way if you want to. Typing the paper title straight into Google usually does the trick. If that fails an email to the author is likely to work.
I did join ACM SIGGRAPH a few years ago to get access but
a) It was very cheap.
b) I signed up for 5 years at a time when the dollar was low. (I'm not in the US).
c) There are some other benefits (news about future conferences etc)
d) Actually I've not needed to use my membership lately as it's often quicker to get the paper from the author anyway.
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Re: Valuable!
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Re: IEEE
Paywalls like this made some sense in the days when publishing was on paper and expensive. But those days are long past. Today the prices charged are close to pure profit and for what increasingly looks really arbitrary.
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"I contacted someone at IEEE who told me that if I have a full copy of Adobe Acrobat (we do here at T&MW), I could remove those words from each page and then send the document to the author for posting. I’m still waiting to hear from the author if he agrees to that."
Do you think the person who told him he could do that was supposed to?
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The mechanism at work
I find it strange however that the author would not have a copy - and usually a version is available via the institution's website (that reminds me - I've got one I need to put up).
Most publishers are happy to allow you to do this provided it's not absolutely identical to what they have. Many authors will put up an expanded version!
In the old (paper) days publishers usually gave the author some free reprints to hand out to anyone who requested them (I still have plenty lying around).
Learned societies and private publishers (Elsevier, Springer etc) get their income from institutional library subscriptions. There has to be the appearance of a barrier to free access otherwise the institutions would not feel the need to subscribe. On the other hand research needs to be available to authors - because a journal gets its credibility from referencing.
So they pretend you can't get at the stuff without a subscription - but in reality you can.
The idea that the author hasn't got a copy is not credible to me. (and I've published via the IEEE, helped run a conference that published with them and peer reviewed for one of their journals.)
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Re: The mechanism at work
Note (from the linked article) that the IEEE person seemed quite happy to tell you how to "get around" their watermark.
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So best to remain on a professional relationship.
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I don't need friends there, thank you very match.
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IEEE Membership
Publishing technical journals as does the IEEE is a very costly enterprise, and they don't take advertising to help defray these costs. So, membership in the Institute, subscription to these journals, or purchasing copies of the articles online, is the only way we have to subsidize these activities. FWIW, you don't need to be a member to purchase articles, though it costs somewhat more for non-members. As a member, I subscribe to a number of journals (they cost extra) and can access the content of those journals online. However, unless I purchase an IEEE Library subscription I have to pay for full access to publications that I don't subscribe to. Do I object to that? Well, once in awhile I find reference to an article I would like to read in detail that I also have to pay for, and while I grumble, if it is something I really need then I will pay. If I needed access to a lot more than I currently do, then I would pay the couple hundred USD per year for unfettered access to the IEEE publication "hoard".
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Re: IEEE Membership
I'm not sure why it should be so costly, since the IEEE doesn't actually create the content, their members do (and pay for the privilege of doing so). If they get rid of dead tree journals and go electronic only (assuming they haven't already), then their publishing costs should be minimal.
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Re: Re: IEEE Membership
Editors, layout artists, printing costs (for those who still need paper publications), servers, software tools, internet connectivity, bandwidth... These all cost $$. Sure, a PDF costs effectively nothing (other than the time to research the paper, write it, lay it out, etc), but that is only the smallest tip of the iceberg. Maybe the IEEE doesn't pay for content contributions (not sure), but all the companies that I have worked for over the past 25 years pay their employees for publishing in technical magazines and journals. I've earned a fair amount in bonus bucks for this in the past.
All this said, I'm not sure that the current rates are appropriate, and I would be strongly in favor of releasing content into the public domain after some reasonable period of time (a year or two?), but fundamentally to charge a nominal fee for access to content published by an organization is not inappropriate. However, to keep research from public access is not. Anyway, this debate is healthy, and I will certainly discuss this issue at length the next time I get together with my colleague Dr. Gary Blank who is the current director-at-large of the IEEE-USA.
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Re: IEEE Membership
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Re: IEEE Membership
for example the CCIR recommendations for FSS communications are internationally adheared too and regarded as 'the' reference yet the IEEE locks all that data away where one must pay to access it.
Outragous, egregious and obscene.
99% of the people who wish to view the data do not need the "benefits" of being an IEEE member.
Whilst it may not be a "for profit" company they sure make a great deal of money to spend jetsetting about and eating caviar.
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Professional membership
That is clearly going against the goal of scholarship (i.e., to build knowledge), and it really annoys a lot of people. But profit centers are hard for people (or organizations) to give up.
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How and Why not?
How is it costly? Do the editors get paid that much? Thanks to the great god of PDFs, the publication and distribution costs approach $zero.
Why not accept advertising? What is so righteous about journals being ad-free?
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Re: How and Why not?
the problem with inter-page advertisement in journals is that companies will try and present an advertisement made to look like an article, or an abstract/summary of an article (a LOT of pharma journals have this problem). some journals that do allow inter-page advertisements write "ADVERTISEMENT" at the bottom in bold letters, while some ban advertisements made to look like journal content.
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Re: How and Why not?
It is cross subsidised from conferences that make a healthy profit.
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IEEE
http://www.plos.org/
http://www.biomedcentral.com/ (For Profit organization, authors pay and ad supported)
http://www.scielo.org/php/index.php?lang=en
http://www.hindawi.com/(for profit authors pay)
The IEEE also makes compulsory to transfer the copyrights from the work.
http://www.ieee.org/portal/cms_docs_iportals/iportals/publications/rights/IEEECopyrightForm .pdf
Bernstein opinions about the IEEE
http://cr.yp.to/writing/ieee.html
http://oad.simmons.edu/oadwiki/OATP_links#Versions_of_the _project_feed
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Re: IEEE Membership
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I recently published a paper in a IEEE conference and the story being put forth here doesn't gel with my understanding of the standard copyright agreement that I signed with the IEEE.
From the IEEE Copyright form:
2. Authors/employers may reproduce or authorize others to reproduce the Work, material extracted verbatim from the Work, or derivative works for the author’s personal use or for company use, provided that the source and the IEEE copyright notice are indicated, the copies are not used in any way that implies IEEE endorsement of a product or service of any employer, and the copies themselves are not offered for sale.
So the paper's author in this case either got into a non-standard copyright agreement with the IEEE or has no idea what his rights as the author are. Or perhaps he is just a really bad record keeper and doesn't keep copies of his own published work - which is a terrible practice for a variety of reasons.
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Besides, I actually don't have a problem with their copyright agreement; it doesn't seem that I, as the author, am not giving up any of the rights that I care about (ability to distribute for free, use subsets of the work in whatever way I see fit, and the copyright on any process described within). In fact I think that the only meaningful right actually given up by the author is the right to sell copies of the published work, which is an awful idea anyway IMO.
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Open Access
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change.org petition
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