[kd0amg]

I suspect many in the HN community are associated with the IEEE and ACM. You might want to consider adding these two orgs to the list. (Disclosure: I am an IEEE member and a past ACM member). Both these orgs have great digital libraries and I have no idea why they are so expensive to access. Can someone with some experience serving on IEEE/ACM committees share some info on the financials?

What do you consider expensive? ACM offers unlimited online access for $200/year. I haven't had trouble pulling that much money together on a grad student income (though I only pay about half that for my membership as a student). Given the salary numbers I see people talking about here, I'm not convinced ACM is prohibitively expensive.

[YetAnotherAlias]

My perspective is that we should be sharing this knowledge with people who cannot afford even that kind of money. $200/year is a lot for many people in many parts of the world.

I do understand that there is some cost involved in maintaing such vast libraries and I am not saying that it should be ignored. As I mentioned above, I would like to know more about how they arrive at these values.

The people who write these papers don't do it for the money. The people who review them don't do it for the money. So why can't we come up with something that makes these works more affordable and accessible to everyone on the planet? This debate is an opportunity to start exploring other such possibilities.

[scott_s]

So why can't we come up with something that makes these works more affordable and accessible to everyone on the planet? This debate is an opportunity to start exploring other such possibilities.

I agree, but that's also why I don't want to lump the ACM and IEEE in with Elsevier. That is, the ACM and IEEE are professional organizations. Their main purpose is to represent the interests of the community of professionals in computing. If they stop charging for articles, they can still exist as an organization. Their members just need to elevate the issue to the point that the larger organization changes its policy.

Elsevier, on the other hand, will cease to exist if they stop charging. Their main purpose - their business model - is to charge for access to their journals. This business model is no longer necessary, and these companies will eventually die.

[dman]

Maybe acm can come up with something like OLPC? The more fortunate among us can perhaps subsidize the cost of access for someone else?