F%!#, what a ripoff. IEEE want $31.00 for that paper.. and sadly, it's the same price whether you're an IEEE member or not. So much for the idea that one of the advantage of being an IEEE member is that you get better pricing on papers from journals you don't already subscribe to.
Even sadder, IBM used to publish their journal archives online, available to anyone, for free. IBM Systems Journal wasn't always behind some shitty IEEE paywall.
Yet sadder still, the price to subscribe to IBM Systems Journal through IEEE? $1,400 USD for a one year sub.
Frack... I now remember why I'm sometimes ashamed to admit to being a member of IEEE. Guess it's time to get move involved in the elections and leadership stuff... sigh
The study in Peopleware was individual coders working on well-defined toy projects. Whatever evidence taken from that may or may not translate to your real-world development organization.
You're right software engineering literature is not as strong as, say, physics -- where you can relatively easily strip out confounding factors. Or medicine, where you can get funding for very large samples. We have to work with the limits of the subject and the research funding.
However it seems that there is a growing body of supporting literature coming from other fields that open-plan is usually a decision with unseen costs. The linked article is an example.
