One should first note that IEEE does not pay authors for content. Authors create their content and the research behind it either on their own dime or that of their employer, granting agency, etc. What's more, many IEEE publications are tied to events, so on top of creating the content, authors must fund travel and presentation time and expenses so that IEEE can charge for the event. They don't even comp admission for their speakers, so you pay them to present at their events.
In case that wasn't bad enough...IEEE's publications are generally only available to IEEE members. They've lowered the base fee for this in recent years, but added a bunch of ancillary fees, so I'm not sure whether it's really an improvement.
The default IEEE publishing contract1 is so restrictive that I could not, e.g. use my own paper in a seminar I taught at a tech conference, or in my own thesis or dissertation (not that I'm planning one) without separate permission per use from IEEE, the granting of which has historically depended on IEEE's mood.2 Also, the author can hand a printed copy of their article to a non-IEEE-member colleague to read, but not post or share a digital one with anybody.
IEEE has since created an "open access" option that allows an article to be published on the web outside their paywall, but only for some types of publications. This still transfers copyright on the content to IEEE and requires that the author receive permission from IEEE for every use of the content by the author that is not deemed "personal use", for example if you used the article when teaching a seminar.
For authors who insist on an actual Creative Commons license for their work, IEEE will sometimes agree to that (one can request it, at least). However, IEEE charges the author about $2k for the privilege. The exact fee depends on which IEEE publication the paper appeared in.
I put a great deal of work into my writing. IEEE wants to:
- Not compensate me for that work.
- Charge me fees and make me pay my own travel for presenting that work at events for which they make money.
- Lock up my work so that it is not accessible to everyone in my field that my work could possibly help.
- Tell me how I can and cannot use my own work.
- Charge me a large sum of money if I want the chance to make my work (which they didn't pay for in the first place) more accessible to others in my field for the good of the community.
There are other things I don't like about them, but that's the ethical problem. Unless Von decided to order me to, I'm not playing ball.
Footnotes
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Links to the relevant policies at IEEE: http://ieeeauthorcenter.ieee.org/author-responsibilities-and-rights/ http://ieeeauthorcenter.ieee.org/choose-a-publishing-agreement/open-access-rights-management/ ↩
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In practice, IEEE seems to be generous about dissertations and theses, but asks authors to pay IEEE to use their own content when teaching classes or seminars more often than not. ↩