Are scientific societies serving the needs of graduate and postdoctoral students?

Abstract

Scientific societies have had a major role in facilitating scientific discoveries and disseminating them. The future of these societies is dependent on a strong and involved membership. However, many of the future members are currently graduate students and postdoctoral fellows, referred to as ‘trainees’. Therefore it is essential that these trainees understand the value of scientific societies and are eager to become members of a society of their choice. The focus of the present paper was to determine what scientific societies should do for trainees to accomplish this goal. Trainees were surveyed to determine why they joined a scientific society, what is the value of belonging to a scientific society, what can the scientific society do to advance the trainees’ career and what can trainees do to help scientific societies. From this survey, and also from years of interacting with trainees, a list of actions that scientific societies should do for their trainees was developed. There is no doubt that the most important people in educating trainees about the value of scientific societies and in influencing the trainees’ decision to be active members are the trainees’ current mentors, who have daily contact with the future members of scientific societies.