The Future of Learned Societies - Part 2

Following on from yesterday's post on the future of learned societies (Making sense of learned societies), I had number of interesting conversations online. The Twitter conversation is summarised in the Storify by Cameron Neylon (The challenge for scholarly societies) below. I also have a few further thoughts to add.

The (only) way for learned societies to survive is to add value for their members. That means specialization to combat the easily available but generalized assistance and advice available online. Some value propositions societies could offer:

• Subject-specific repositories
• Facilitating peer review - panels of specialist reviewers
• OA meta journals, - knowledge curation?

My view is that such activities should receive public (government) financial support as more cost effective alternative to commercial publishers. these activities are an essential part of the research infrastructure equivalent to the research councils.






Disclosure:
I am currently a member of the Society of Biology Research Dissemination Committee. All posts on this blog reflect my personal opinions and do not represent the views of any organizations I may be associated with.

A.J. Cann