[jwr]

You mean, check with my local library here in Poland, right?

Don't place me in the "doesn't want to pay for content" box. I am OK with paying for content and I do pay for many things online. But there are two issues with ACM:

1. The research has been paid for with taxpayers' dollars (I wasn't the taxpayer, but still).

2. $15 is really expensive.

And of course, if it were just one article that would advance my work a lot, I'd gladly pay. But you don't know that ahead of time. And if you're building startups, you usually do a lot of wide-area research, so it isn't that one article, it's hundreds of articles that you need to skim through.

I also don't buy the argument that we need to pay so much just so that we get peer-reviewed content. JMLR (Journal of Machine-Learning Research) is a prime example that this need not be the case.

[Zak]

You can put me in the "doesn't want to pay for content" box when it comes to science. Science, including computer science works best when new discoveries are spread far and wide free of charge. Journals make their money by securing publication rights in exchange for deciding that something is important enough. Once, it was difficult to publish information to a wide audience, but in the web age, journals seem like a bit of a scam to me.

[regularfry]

The curation job still needs paying for, but I think it's pretty clear that the ACM and others have strayed from that to trying to squeeze the long tail for as much money as they can can get.

[lkozma]

Besides, does peer-review cost anything for them? The one time I was asked by an ACM journal to review a paper for them, there was no monetary exchange involved.

[voidpointer]

Yes, or the library of the nearest university will be likely to grant you access for a small fee even if you are not a student there, plus you will also get access to their books.