All online USENIX proceedings now free

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

________________________________________
From: Matt Blaze [mab () crypto com]
Sent: Thursday, March 13, 2008 1:03 PM
To: David Farber
Subject: All online USENIX proceedings now free

I'm delighted to report that USENIX, probably the most important
technical
society at which I publish (and on whose board I serve), has taken a
long-
overdue lead toward openly disseminating scientific research. Effective
immediately, all USENIX proceedings and papers will be freely
available on the
USENIX web site as soon as they are published. (Previously, most of the
organization's proceedings required a member login for access for the
first year
after their publication.)  The proceedings are available at:
   http://www.usenix.org/publications/library/proceedings/

For years, many authors have made their papers available on their own
web sites,
but the practice is haphazard, non-archivial, and, remarkably,
actively discouraged
by the restrictive copyright policies of many journals and
conferences. So USENIX's
step is important both substantively and symbolically. It reinforces
why scientific
papers are published in the first place: not as a proprietary revenue
source, but to
advance the state of the art for the benefit of society as a whole.

Unfortunately, other major technical societies that sponsor
conferences and journals
still cling to the antiquated notion, rooted in a rapidly-
disappearing print-based
publishing economy, that they naturally "own" the writings that
volunteer authors,
editors and reviewers produce. These organizations, which insist on
copyright control
as a condition of publication, argue that the sale of conference
proceedings and journal
subscriptions provides an essential revenue stream that subsidizes
their other good works.
But this income, however well it might be used, has evolved into an
ill-gotten windfall.
We write scientific papers first and last because we want them read.
When papers were
actually printed on paper it might have been reasonable to expect
authors to donate the
copyright in exchange for production and distribution. Today, of
course, such a model
seems at best quaintly out of touch with the needs of researchers and
academics who can
no longer tolerate the delay or expense of seeking out printed copies
of documents they
expect to find on the web.

Organizations devoted to computing research should recognize this not-
so-new reality better
than anyone. It's time for ACM and IEEE to follow USENIX's leadership
in making scientific
papers freely available to all comers. Let's urge them to do so.

Matt Blaze
http://www.crypto.com/blog


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