2004 Registration Now Open

ISCB membership registration for 2004 is now live at www.iscb.org/membership. We are experiencing a deluge of renewals and new memberships. Be sure to sign up now to activate your member benefits right away.

We are also receiving positive feedback to the significant change to our membership structure for the new year—tiered dues within the Professional and Student/Trainee membership categories. Although ISCB dues have always been kept as low as possible, the board of directors felt it was essential to reach across financial barriers by providing reduced rates to members from developing countries that might otherwise find it extremely difficult or impossible to join the Society. Therefore, based on the World Bank annual ranking of economies, the following dues structure has been implemented for 2004:

Professionals:
$70 USD if working in a High Income Country
$40 USD if working in a Lower Middle or Upper Middle Income County
$25 USD if working in a Low Income Country

Students & Post docs:
$35 USD if studying/training in a High Income Country
$20 USD if studying/training in a Lower Middle or Upper Middle Income County
$12 USD if studying/training in a Low Income Country

A link is available from the membership page of our site to the World Bank ranking, so please be sure to check if you think you might fall into one of the reduced rate categories.

In addition to introducing a tiered dues structure, the other major change for 2004 memberships is that all journal offerings are optional, including Bioinformatics online. Previously online access to Bioinformatics was bundled into the price of an ISCB membership. This appeared to make the online journal “free” to all members, but the Society was actually obligated to pay the publisher, Oxford University Press, a significant portion of each member’s dues to cover the cost of this access, thus significantly draining ISCB’s financial resources. Last fall we surveyed our members to assess, among other things, the need/value of online access to Bioinformatics. Approximately 20% of the membership responded (a very solid number for an unsolicited survey), with half indicating they have access to the journal through their institutions. Therefore, we were offering as a primary benefit something that 50% of our members did not need, and thus opted to allocate those much needed resources to other important programs of the Society. Among the 50% of respondents who did not need the online access, however, many expressed they still valued the access when traveling or working outside their institution. Consequently, ISCB negotiated a highly reduced rate with OUP so that all members who want or need it can purchase personal online subscriptions. We also negotiated additional discounts with OUP and publishers of several other journals, and will continue to work on our members’ behalf to expand the journal benefits in future years.

If there is a journal you would like to see added for 2005, please write to let us know at admin@iscb.org. And don’t delay in registering for your ISCB 2004 membership today!