As I’ve written here before, I really cannot believe how poorly IEEE Xplore works. I have what the IEEE calls the IEEE Member Digital Library. This is a $35/month (!) service that allows you to download 25 (!!!) papers a month. So, I just tried to download a paper with the following result:
Seems pretty straightforward, right? IEEE Transactions, etc. However, I get this message:
“The content you requested is not included in your subscription.”
Hmmm… So I check to make sure my Member Digital Library is up to date, and I see that it expires April 30, 2008 (today’s date), so that should be fine. I call the IEEE and they confirm my suspicion that, since I’m logging in from work, and my institution (UNH) has a subscription, the IEEE system confuses me with UNH. SinceUNH’s subscription doesn’t allow access to this paper, I can’t access it.
Now, I did tell the very nice person on the phone (Virginia) that this is UNBELIEVABLE. This is the IEEE. And this is a $420/year service. And it’s work related, so I need to be able to access it from WORK. And most infuriatingly, it’s not even a consistent problem. I’ve downloaded plenty of papers from work using Xplore, while other times, like today, I was thwarted.
My grave concern was noted, and I received a promise that if I email Virginia the title of the article, I will receive a copy of it via email. I will also get credit for the papers I was not able to download this month on my next month’s allotment of papers (kind of like the minutes roll-over on a cell phone plan). Thanks Virginia. I hope you do tell management that they need to make fixing this service a priority.
Andrew Kun