paleonet Paleo Society Memberships

["Jere H. Lipps" <jlipps@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

PaleoNetters:

While at GSA a couple of weeks ago, several (maybe a dozen) of us talked 
about memberships in the societies.   Something is up and we did not have a 
consensus on what is happening or whether it is good or bad for 
paleontology.  Here's the scoop:

Cushman Foundation for Foram Research has lost a huge number of members and 
institutional subscriptions in the past few years.

Paleo Society is down about 15% in the past 4-5 years.

Micropaleontology subscriptions are down.

Society of Vertebrate Paleontology is up some.

And AAAS, the publisher of Science magazine, is down about 10-15% in the 
last 3-4 years.


PS and AAAS attribute this decline to going on-line with their 
journals.   SVP went on-line but increased their membership.  Cushman and 
other micropaleo groups are down but have not yet gone on-line.  Maybe the 
decline of oil exploration affected the micropaleo memberships while the 
on-line journals did cut into PS and AAAS.  SVP has a component of amateurs 
that may contribute to an increase, but that won't account for much of it, 
I am told.

Several questions arise:

What is causing this decline in all but SVP in North America?

Are other journals elsewhere in the world declining in 
subscriptions/memberships?

Should struggling journals publish papers from non-members gratis or charge 
for it since the members now pay?

What will the impact of e-publication of our journals be?

Does any of this matter?
Here's my view on this last question.   If we look at the Paleo Soc, for 
example, it has a membership of around 1800 or so.  Of those, maybe 350 
vote in its elections for officers, by-law changes, etc.   Maybe 300- come 
to the annual luncheon.   So clearly, about 1500 are members for the single 
reason that they get the journal since they do not participate 
otherwise.   While that is fine, it raises the question of whether or not 
we need large memberships once our journal costs decline by going-on-line 
(as we have been promised).  If they do, then we don't need large 
memberships and we can concentrate our efforts and smaller income on 
services and benefits to the "real members" while e-publication continues 
to be supported by those fewer members and libraries.   Those who want hard 
copies can pay for "on-demand" printing, and could or could not be members, 
as we choose.

Quite a few of us in the societies are trying to anticipate the new 
future.  It will be very different from the past with e-publications, but 
how?  And what impact will it have?   Can we modify the members benefits 
sufficiently to maintain a large membership or should we go "smaller, 
cheaper and more efficient"?

This will have impact on all paleontologists and so should be worth some 
discussion on PaleoNet.  So should e-publishing and the various business 
models and publication modes.  Maybe we can discuss this one too.

Jere