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 yeartiered 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 members
dues to cover the cost of this access, thus significantly draining
ISCBs 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 dont delay in registering for your ISCB 2004 membership
today!
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