Mueen Nawaz wrote:
> 	The guys who really charge an arm and a leg are the private for-profit
> publishers like Elsevier and Springer.

They're pretty bad too.  And the conference proceedings are awfully 
expensive if you can even get them, too.

> 	Not an ACM member, but someone told me that every member gets access to
> all their journals. 

Maybe online these days. There were definitely subscription fees for the 
paper versions back when I was still doing that sort of thing.

> 	And yes, I agree the amount they charge for a given article (if you
> just want that one) is also ridiculous. It may be OK if you _really_
> know that's the article you want, but if you're just doing ordinary
> research, you'll have to go through dozens of papers.

Yeah. I think the idea is you read it in the library or something, and then 
you want a copy, so you buy one instead of just using the photocopier. I 
don't know about nowadays, but it used to be that you'd order articles from 
places that warehoused several copies of the magazines and someone would 
manually sit down and cut out the article to send to you. Again, I suspect 
now that everything's online this is different. :-)

> 	In any case, I've often heard that if you really want a paper, just
> email the author and they'll send it to you. Haven't put it to the test.

Probably, yeah. :-)

> I've also heard that over the last few years, a number of professional
> societies (one or both of the US physics ones, and perhaps IEEE as well)
> actually do allow you to put preprints online or on places like arxiv.

Apparently not ACM.  I've seen a number of online papers taken down because 
the copyright was signed over to ACM.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "Ouch ouch ouch!"
   "What's wrong? Noodles too hot?"
   "No, I have Chopstick Tunnel Syndrome."

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