Why Do Scientists Join Societies? - The Scientist - Magazine of the Life Sciences
Abstract
Click to view larger version (11K) We surveyed 340 readers to find out if they are members of professional scientific societies, and why they join. A majority of readers, 82.4%, belong to at least one society, and a remarkable 21.4% belong to four or more societies. Important reasons that a majority of scientists join professional societies include: participation in meetings and conferences (67.4%), association with fellow scientists (65.6%), and subscriptions to research journals (60.1%). The 17.6% who are not members of any society gave a very wide variety of reasons--cost and irrelevance being mentioned most frequently. Society membership secretaries take note: A number of readers answered that they had no good reason for not being members of a society and planned to join up soon!