Comment by jph00 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jph00 | Hacker News Reader

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I wrote this tweet. Wasn't sure anyone would read it - glad it's got noticed, because I do think it's an important issue!

I'd love to know where that money at IEEE and ACM is going. The annual reports don't make it at all clear, unfortunately. Obviously, there are for-profit publishers where the money is simply going to huge profit margins. But that's not the case for professional societies.

One thing I noticed when I had to sign up to ACM for a conference a few years ago was that I got harangued by sales-people from ACM for months afterwards, trying to get me on a call to have me buy more expensive memberships. It wasn't an automated system - it was an actual person, trying to get me onto an actual phone call with them. It occurred to me at the time that that must be very expensive, yet it's still a profitable thing for them to do - so there's clearly a lot of money changing hands...

I don't think this is a good sign. Perhaps the professional societies can openly publish a full breakdown of what they're spending money on?

Thank you for tweeting this.

I'm making my way through the IEEE annual report to which you linked[a], and am dumbfounded too. Not only does the IEEE spend $193.4M/year operating "periodicals and media," they also spend $103.5M/year on "membership and public imperatives" (!?) and $38.5M/year on "standards" (!?). Note that these figures do not include the amounts spent on conferences, which are at least tangible.

Moreover, it looks like the organization has $523.8M in investments at fair value (p. 43) -- an endowment greater than that of the vast majority of US colleges and universities. Am I imagining things, or does the IEEE look a lot like "a small hedge fund attached to a professional organization?"

To put that last figure in perspective, if income and gains from the IEEE's investment portfolio are, say, at least 5%/year, they could fund all of arXiv.org's annual expenses 20 times over in perpetuity without dipping into capital.

Something smells rotten indeed.

[a] https://www.ieee.org/content/dam/ieee-org/ieee/web/org/corpo...

Another asset they have (and monetize) is a vast library of old papers. For instance, if you want to read Kildall's 1973 classic "A unified approach to global program optimization" then ACM will gladly let you do so... after you pay them $15.00 for the 8 page paper. https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/512927.512945

It's hard to see how this is compatible with their claim to be "Advancing Computing as a Science & Profession".

Another reason why something like Sci-Hub is a public good despite its negative press.

I just clicked it and downloaded the paper?

(I agree with you just possibly a poor example)

If you're on a university or corporate network it's possible there is an org-level subscription that gives you "free" access to everything.

Clicked at home and got the paywall. Pretty sure you're on a network with access.

Spooky! That makes sense.

Wouldn't have known because I've been (ummm...) "Acquiring" (libgen) them elsewhere

> and $38.5M/year on "standards" (!?)

Does "standards" mean things like these?

WiFi: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEEE_802.11

Floating point: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEEE_754

Those types of standards seem pretty important.

Now that you mention it, probably, yes.

Still, $38.5M/year?

Those are very expensive, although that only pushes the ripoff back one level, because why do they cost money at all?

because you have to run lots of meetings and pay technical editors to go over them, produce diagrams, etc?

i'm not arguing that any specific amount is appropriate, but "free" seems a little low.

I was secretary for IEEE 802.20. It is a volunteer position as is the chair position, but some evil company usually has the "independent" chair on its payroll (I'm looking at you, QUALCOMM). There are no paid editors draft standards are written by committee or companies as are change proposals (I have standardized many) and the chair usually merges the changes, for free. The only people paid at conferences are the registration people.

Wow, I didn't realize the standards stuff is also done by volunteers.

> The only people paid at conferences are the registration people.

...if by paid you mean "free labor from local organizers and their students, plus some $1K-$3K travel awards for a PhD student in exchange for 20 hours of front desk registration, with maybe one association employee overseeing everything".

TBF, the travel awards are actually a pretty reasonable rate (avg $2K for 1/2 week of labor) if you close your eyes and ignore that:

1. CS PhD students are under-paid by a factor of 10x

2. CS PhD students are probably the only tech workers who are expected to raise funds on their own for work-related travel multiple times per year

3. these organizations double-dip. They are essentially paying a bit over market rate for labor required to run their conference registration desks while claiming that this relatively small amount of $$$ gives them some moral justification for price-gouging everything else (see: any ACM/IEEE statement about open access policy, which inevitably mentioned sponsoring student travel...)

4. ...and then still lean on conference organizers to find corporate sponsors to supplement those travel awards.

5. and those same students do a ton of other free labor in the form of writing and reviewing papers.

And so on.

Basically, any time I think "oh yeah, ACM/IEEE do that thing I didn't think about. Well, those people must be paid / must be receiving honest-to-goodness grants", it turns out: nope! All the work is done by volunteers, and any "grants" come with labor requirements.

TBF, none of that is totally unreasonable until you realize how much money these orgs are raking in. Where the hell does it all go!?

In the humanities, this is how all the journals work: professors and grad students do all the writing and editing for free for the reputation it gives them, then some asshole company charges $30 for a 5 page PDF from 1989.

Isn't the ACM run by the community for the community? Can we meet Pancake at a conference and ask her directly for clarification if the reports aren't detailed enough?

FYI to save people some Googling...

I thought "Pancake" was an auto-correct mistake, because I'd never heard that surname before. But it really is the ACM president's surname.

Around here in the emergency medicine field we have a Norma Pancake and a Dr Waffle.

This makes way more giddy than would be appropriate if I were to meet them in person.

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