Re: Deczky all-pass filter design Matlab

On Sun, 22 Mar 2009 16:08:08 -0700 (PDT), dbd <dbd@xxxxxxxx> wrote:

On Mar 22, 12:57 pm, Rune Allnor <all...@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
...
I didn't have access to the actual numbers, but I when
thsese questions were up where I worked ten years ago,
the lunch-table talk mentioned $100,000 per year for
an organization. I don't know if that was unlimited
access to all of IEEE (it might have been) or if it
was a subset.

The problem occurs if you pay these amounts of $$$
for maybe 5 - 10 people to get access to what they
need. It's very easy to shut down such a subscription.

Under the current IEEE cost of memberships there are alternative
routes to provide coverage for 5-10 much cheaper.

Is $100,000 out of line for thousands of undergrads, hundreds of grad
students, and hundreds of faculty? Eric's claims were 'extortionate'
for 'Univesitiy libraries'.

...
Let's say 'a few hundred $$$' is $750 and one article
costs $15 to download. That's 50 articles per year.
How many people download that many articles? In my
experience, not very many. Those who do are usually
grad students, who have access through univeristies.
How many of those 50 articles turn out to be useful?
In my experience, maybe 1 in 10 turn out to be useful,
the rest are peripherical at best. The problem is that
one never knows what any given article turns out to
be beforehand.

Anyway, with this pricing policy one can expect to
pay $150 between each useful article.

Real numbers:
IEEE Membership $170
Society memberships $20-50 each
Publication costs after society membership $5-50 per publication

Each publication subscription includes unlimited access to the
archives of that publication. no per article fee.

Your $750 can buy unlimited access to 8 or more journals.

The IEEE member per article fee is only for unsubscribed publications.

There is also a fixed cost per month alternative subscription option
for a set number of articles per month selected from any of the
publications. Some societies with a large number of publications also
have a group publication subscription rate.

In my case I was a member of and paid for subscriptions to the
transactions for Information Theory, Communications, and Signal
Processing. I figured I'd be covered that way and have access to
articles I'd need.

What happened was that Comm split out Wireless Communications as a
separate transaction, most societies also have "Journal on
Selected...." whatever, and there are tons of little peripheral
journals and publications that are closely connected to, but NOT
INCLUDED in the download capabilities for the appropriate areas. I
was paying for access, and it seemed like every other time I needed a
paper it was in almost, but not quite, the right journal so that I
couldn't get to it without having to pay out yet again.

And this was after paying close to $500/year for the membership,
societies, transactions, etc. It seemed to me like I wasn't getting
even close to what I was paying for.

What often happens is that a good paper gets rejected (for, in my
experience, often ridiculous reasons), so they go to the next best
journal which is related. Since the editors are different (and I
suspect the politics of "let's accept this good paper that those dorks
rejected" comes in to play sometimes), sometimes the papers go not to
where they best fit, but to where the review process finally let it
in.

Anticipating all of the possible journals across where this can happen
is a losing proposition. Even if you could anticipate it maintaining
subscriptions across all of the relevant journals/transactions where
the papers may land is a very expensive proposition. In my
experience the IEEE system is just broken and needs an overhaul.

I'm pretty sure I know what Erik's and Eric's points
are. I'd be interested in hearing your arguments that
everything is fine as is - if that is indeed what you
mean? I can't find any clear opinions stated in
your post.

I'd like information to be cheaper.

At the moment, I think that the IEEE non-member article rates are
comparable with the rates of commercial journals for non-subscribes in
academic topics.

I downloaded a paper from "Nature" a while back and IIRC it cost me
$30. That's comparable to the IEEE rate, but in my estimation the
quality of papers in Nature is quite a bit higher. This suggests to
me that IEEE papers should be quite a bit less expensive than papers
from Nature, and I don't think they currently reflect that.

IEEE member rates for large scale access for frequent users are priced
much lower than the numbers presented by those who have complained
without checking the facts. Since unlimited access is available, what
the price per article is depends on your frequency of usage. IEEE
pricing is certainly in favor of frequent users. That is acceptable
practice in most markets.

For the most part, though, IEEE members are individuals and not volume
users of papers. Over the last ten years I suspect that I've
probably downloaded on average 3-6 papers/year, and maybe 10 or so in
a peak year.

Rune

This isn't an issue limited to comp.dsp and the IEEE. The development
of the web has altered operations of the ACM, JASA, and commercial
engineering publishers. (And the expectations of internet users who
have had a taste of some things for free for a while.) Engineering is
only one of the myriad subject areas facing these changes. I think
that complainers who don't expect to be dismissed as whiners should
get their facts straight and if they want a change, should suggest
what they think is a feasible alternative, if only as an attempt at an
existence proof that there is a feasible alternative. Don't we expect
everyone to do their homework at comp.dsp?

Yes, and I think we might also expect someone who just doesn't agree
on a point to resist the temptation to label others as "whiners". It's
a problem for a lot of people, it's been mentioned here before, it's
fine if you don't agree but that doesn't make your position superior.

Eric Jacobsen
Minister of Algorithms
Abineau Communications
http://www.ericjacobsen.org

Blog: http://www.dsprelated.com/blogs-1/hf/Eric_Jacobsen.php
.

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