Todd,
IEEE Xplore undoubtedly does carry a lot of interesting journal articles, but we should not reward their selfish and parasitic Google spamming by buying their content.
One way to cut Xplore out of your technical searches is to use Google's advanced search and mark "Don't return results from domain:" and put in "ieee.org."
I have sent a proposal to Google that they consider a search option that might be called "Google Free" or somesuch, that identifies and weeds out subscription-only content. This would automatically eliminate results from the black-hat Google spammers (IEEE and Metapress are the big ones) on the basis of their domain names, in addition to journal results from non-Google-spammers getting rich off the Business Of Science (like Elsevier and Springer) that you still don't want to pay for. All these journal publishers are flush with money, and as de-facto tollbooths on the avenues of science, constitute an impediment to the egalitarian exchange of information that allows science to flourish. I understand charging money for the services of running a printing press, but I fail to understand why it costs my library several thousand dollars to secure access to a few issues of a journal online. What on earth does the publisher do to merit being paid so much?
The Internet has brought about the possibility for enormous freedom in scientific communication. Just look at our own "open source" forum here. The science profession needs to take control and use this freedom to exchange ideas itself, and cut out the profiteering middle men like IEEE and Metapress. With their sneaky Google doorway pages and exorbitant fees, these people are practically begging for unemployment and I see no reason why they should be denied their request.
-Carl |
2007-01-29 19:08 IEEE Xplore: Guilty of Google spamming (Carl Willis) [Latest: 2007-03-12 18:10]
2007-01-30 11:28 Re: IEEE Xplore: Guilty of Google spamming (Carl Willis)
(Carl Willis)