Affiliation in Transition: Rethinking Society Membership with EarlyCareer Researchers in the Social Sciences

"The coalescence of the open-access movement during the early years of the 21st century marked an inflection point for the member organizations known as scholarly or learned societies. As new information and communication technologies intersected with a diverse but impactful set of claims about the benefits of providing free and immediate access to scholarly publications, these organizations were forced not only to reexamine their business models but also to confront fundamental questions on the order of “what are scholarly societies for?” Such questions were, on the one hand, specific to the internal dynamics of the science system and its shifting relations with other societal actors. They were, on the other hand, reflective of a more general reassessment of associational forms from civic organizations to political parties. 1 2 3 4 ..."