Don Burnside, Acting ARS Membership Officer.  Email: don.burnside@iinet.net.au

 

The membership categories and numbers of the Society (as at October 2017) are shown in the somewhat confusing table below.  I will endeavour to explain ….

Financial members

We have 193 members who are currently financial for the 2017 calendar year.  This includes 21 people who opted for the three-year memberships and hence will not need to renew until the end of 2019.

Although the number of current financial members is less than we would like, it compares favourably with the situation at the end of 2016, when we were down to 149 financial members.  However, it is a far cry from the mid 1990s when we had over 450 financial members.

There is a trend for people to switch from the ‘hardcopy journal’ to the ‘e-journal’ category and we would expect that trend to continue.  Our publisher, CSIRO tells us this is a growing trend across all their publications.

Non-financial members

There are 27 people who were financial members in 2016, but have not renewed their memberships for calendar 2017.  Unfortunately, they will be ‘cut adrift’ at the end of this year, but it will be easy enough for people in that category to rejoin as a new member.

It goes without saying that we would love to have you back!  Further, remember if you do rejoin you will be eligible for a member’s registration fee at the 2019 ARS Biennial Conference in Canberra.

Complimentary members

Complimentary members include the Fellows of the Society, those people paid honoraria for services (Editor in Chief of The Rangeland Journal, Chair of the Publications Committee, website and social media editors), and Associate Editors of the Journal.

In addition, in recent years, complimentary one year memberships have been awarded as prizes at various conferences, including ARS Biennial Conferences.  We hope that those students who received one year complimentary memberships (for 2017) at the IRC in Saskatoon, and at the Restore, Revegetate, Regenerate Conference in New England will convert to paid memberships for 2018 and beyond.

Institutional subscribers

Institutional subscribers to The Rangeland Journal, which include university libraries, major research institutions and the like are not members of ARS, and instead subscribe direct to CSIRO to receive the Journal.  As can be seen, the trend is for distribution to occur electronically.  The number of institutional subscribers has remained about the same for a few years, and growing this number is an objective.  ARS receives a modest royalty from these subscriptions, and it does ensure the Journal reaches a very large number of people.

Membership renewals

Those people whose paid or complimentary memberships expire on 31 December 2017 will have received renewal notices recently..  Three year memberships will again be a renewal option.  Further, people who are over 65 years and retired from active employment can opt for concessional membership rates.

The good news is that the rates for membership have not changed this year.

 

Category

Hardcopy Journal + RMN

E-journal + RMN

RMN only

Total

Paying members

138* (118**)

51* (46**)

31* (29**)

220* (193**)

Complimentary***

5

39

0

44***

Institutional subscribers

11

79

0

90

Total

154 (134)

169 (164)

31 (29)

354 (327)

* Total number of members to pay in 2017
** Number already paid in 2017
*** There are 50 complimentary members, but 6 of these volunteered membership subs for 2017