35 This has been covered here and here.
I’ve been an ACS employee for many, many years, but I’ve grown concerned with the direction of the organization. I’m sending this email to alert you that ACS has grown increasingly corporate in its structure and focus. Management is much more concerned with getting bonuses and growing their salaries rather than doing what is best for membership. For instance, Madeleine Jacobs is now pulling in almost $1 million in salary and bonuses… That’s almost 3X what Alan Leshner makes over at AAAS, and almost double what Drew Gilpin Faust makes to lead Harvard.I think Madeleine is smart, but I’m not quite sure if she’s in the same category as Dr. Faust. She doesn’t even have a PhD!
What really concerns me is a move by ACS management to undermine the open-access movement. Rudy Baum has been leading the fight with several humorous editorials—one in which he referred to open-access in the pages of C&EN as “socialized science.” ACS has also spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in membership money to hire a company to lobby against open-access.
What troubles me the most is when ACS management decided to hire Dezenhall Resources to fight open-access. Nature got hold of some internal ACS emails written by Brian Crawford that discussed how Dezenhall could help us undermine open-access. Dezenhall later created a group called Partnership for Research Integrity in Science and Medicine (PRISM), which has this silly argument that open-access means “no more peer-review.”
If you’re wondering why ACS is fighting this, it’s because people like Rudy Baum, Brian Crawford and other ACS managers receive bonuses based on how much money the publishing division generates. Hurt the publishing revenue; you hurt their bonuses.
I’m hoping that sending out this email will get people to force ACS executives to become more transparent in how they act and spend membership money. Not to mention their crazy need for fatter salaries.
It’s time for some change. If you want to check out the sources for this information, there is a wiki site that has all the articles and documents outlining what I’ve just written.
You can find it here:
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=American_Chemical_Society
Those of us inside ACS know that it’s time for things to change. But management won’t alter their behavior. The money is just too good.
Sincerely,
ACS Insider
Uhhhhh… hm. I guess I should be all incensed that someone without a Ph.D. is running an organization of chemists and is banking huge skrilla off my ACS dues, but I’m not. I’m far more incensed that the ACS isn’t a transparent organization and if I wanted to read paper JACs while droppin’ deuces at home I’d have to shell out several hundred bucks. I mean, I *hearts* the internet but I don’t like reading articles on it. It hurts my eyes for some reason and I’m all paranoid about getting poop on my laptop in the bathroom whilst droppin my deuces. (though, I guess the idea of getting poop on my ACS journals is something that should bother me since… uhh… well. When was the last time you got poop on your hands? … this… yeah… moving on.)
I am a lover of open access, but I’m not so sure I can demand that those capitalist pigs, hogging the peoples’ science for themselves, give it to us for free since it was already done using the tax dollars. I don’t see that making the print journals free and so I don’t see myself getting anywhere with it. (I.E. I’ll still have to read my journals on the internets and will still have to read SciAm while droppin’ my deucers.) I think it’s an obvious concern, but the ACS doesn’t read these blogs anyway.
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I frankly don’t like either side- the coroporate cock-suckers at ACS who take my dues and publish a shitty magazine with it and stuff it in my mailbox every week FILLED with articles about how awesome the fine chemicals industry is; and the arrogant, myopic douches who champion open source, who think everything should be done for free.
I’ve said it for a while now- idiots sitting at a computer (including myself) don’t change shit. You want to make real changes? Become one of them- a prof or a VP at some big pharma firm. You have to play by their rules first before you can make any real changes. But if you find this morally repugnant, go ahead and continue writing in blogs about how awesome open-source is and watch them get dugg and watch nothing change.
awesome. Toatlly agreed.
So you basically you are talking about corporate espionage? Who the fuck has that kinda of lifelong gall? I think the problem is that people have that idea of trying sneak into the system, so they can dismantle it from the inside out. But the system will corrupt you too! Why does anyone think they are exempt? What really needs to happen is just to fucking quit all this stupid grad school bullshit. All I really want to do is chemistry, I don’t really care how. Why don’t we start our own chemical organization?
Who the fuck has that kinda of lifelong gall?
Me.
After this article, I think I will continue being a “dynamic member” of the ACS for the forseeable future. MRS dues are only $35; MRS bulletin is as good as CEN, and the MRS meetings are actually organized. Plus they have sweet awards.
Aldrich was once “Chemists helping Chemists?” The ACS rotted in synch. 95% of degreed chemists are not employed if employment is a permanent 9-5 (when did that ever happen?) job with benefits doing chemistry. The real world number is ~60%. Project SEED will contract it. ChemEs are also hurting – if it discharges move it offshore!
Uncle Al’s ACS card says “32 years of service.” Comes soon a day when Uncle Al dines upon others’ dues. Reregister Democrat and demand the entire Third World enter America for compassionate nurturance. Declare them to be diversity chemists.
Science 318(5487) 36 (2007)
Plant trees in Baviaanskloof, Africa to offset carbon footprints.
Permanent 9-5 with benefits, doing chemistry?
Easy! Just work for the government.
Three months. Bad idea for both sides.
I’ve seen the layout change!
I liked the panel on the left, it used to be feed of feeds for me.
oh, you liked it, too, huh?
On the other hand my computers don’t vomit anymore since the RSS feed doesn’t cycle suck. I almost stopped coming to the lab.
I think it’s time to stop using the word “deuce” for poop. I can’t play pocket deuces in poker anymore, because smiling at the childish humor ruins my poker face.
Kyle, this isn’t quite the two extremes you’re presenting it as. I don’t think anyone has an objection to paying a fair price for journals, including defraying the cost and a small profit margin. And open access doesn’t necessarily mean free for print editions. But look at the current model – a scientist provides a research manuscript to a journal for free. The publisher has other scientists review it for free. Then, if accepted, the scientist GIVES the journal the copyright for free. Not a lifetime licence, but signs over the copyright. And any future royalties. And to add insult to injury, sometimes the author even pays page charges! And then the publisher happily closes off the research behind a firewall, sometimes with ridiculously restrictive rules even to the authors, to those who are willing to licence / pay for it at obscene costs, all the while using the supposed “small niche market” excuse as a way to vastly overcharge. And the publishers are really happy about online licencing, because it puts the libraries and customers over a barrel because they lose the entire archive the moment they stop paying.
Open access is perhaps not the answer to everything, but at least people are trying to find alternate solutions to the entrenched inequity going on here.
… “’small niche market’ excuse”
It’s not an excuse, because people are *willing* to do it. Open access is an interesting model, but it’s not that much better.
One wonders why someone hasn’t come up with a model wherin the publisher pays back the authors, say, per non-self citation, over the course of X years, and leave the copyright with the author (and still defend the copyright). This would incentivise the submitters to write decent articles. People would line up like nobody’s business to publish in such a journal, and you’d get to charge advertisers shitloads of money since everyone would read it. Also your impact factor would shoot up since if you published your article in the journal, you’d beg your friends to cite you.
Also there would be less asshole professors who hold onto articles for ever, because the faster you publish the sooner the dough starts rolling in.
Good point…
Don’t forget the part about how research is largely funded by taxpayers’ dollars, and therefore (in my opinion), should readily accessible to the public. Don’t get me wrong, there should be a fee for print versions, but ~$350 a year for Org. Lett.? C’mon.
“(though, I guess the idea of getting poop on my ACS journals is something that should bother me since… ”
Since they cost more than your computer?
When was the last time you got poop on your hands?
Wait, your own poop or someone else’s? Are we talking about a lot of poop here? Or just, like, dingleberried? Cause, I mean, it happens to the best of us… you know… sometimes…
…
…
Dingleberries are, of course, the result of having a poor diet (slightly softer stool) and not taking enough time to wipe your bum after pooping because you’re anxious to get back to lab and finish up stuff. Never happened to me till grad school.
I heard scuttlebutt about a young professor at my fine institution who was so hyper, while two of his grad students were peeing in the bathroom, they witnessed their PI enter, drop a couple of bombs, wash his hands, and run back to lab while they were still peeing.
That is totally sick and wrong. Every poop should be enjoyed and appreciated. It is not a race!!!!
The Chemical Abstracts Service is another ACS division that might be included in discussions on open access. I suspect that it makes more money for the ACS than the journals division. One issue here is that CAS have a huge database of chemical structures that you need to use their not particularly powerful software to search it substructurally. I don’t know what sorts of salaries they pay their top management but it’d be interesting to find out.
Interestingly, we got rid of the ACS print sub from our lib, then everyone found out that access to all the articles is not free online. So we asked the lib to sub to the paper version again, and they couldn’t do it because ACS asked for an ENORMOUS fee, something like 5000$ or something. As Excimer said, charging such amounts for that magazine half filled with repetitive industry stats is criminal. ACS, please don’t rave on about open source again.
I want my own my lab damnit. I want to do independent research! Fuck all this control bullshit.
Well, take part in the first Chemmunity experiment. Who knows where it will lead? http://www.chemmunity.com
Mitch
I like to take tet. lett.s from the library into the bathroom with me, but I use them to wipe afterwards.. I think it improves their chemistry content.
Thanks for posting this! What has always annoyed me are the huge salaries of the people who are in charge of the ACS!
I have always thought that an “International Society of Chemists” should be formed, which is independent of any country.
What do you guys think about this idea?
It sounds even more corruptible.
Mitch
I concur, doctor.
yes, but we’d more likely be the ones corrupting it! i am for this. replacing a corrupt system with an even more corrupt one has historical precedence, in any case. it could work! I’d be RICH!
Actually, Chemical Forums has been beating the RSC recently…
http://www.chemicalforums.com/.....ic=19880.0
Mitch
I think it’s funny that you’re so proud of that, when the RSC’s website is a very specialized website geared toward institutions, industry, etc. whose rates for the information they carry is not only limited to those who care about such information, but also cost-prohibitive for non-subscriber individuals to access, while your site is free and geared toward kids getting help with their homework. Comparing the two is a bit disingenuous, I think. Still, congrats. You dug yourself into a goldmine.
Irregardless, there traffic should be higher.