Guest Post — The US Government's New Guidance for Federal Grants and The Case for Scholarly Societies - The Scholarly Kitchen

"There are many points of view I considered as I read and debated the OMB proposed change. More to come in another post about the potential impact on researchers, grant recipient organizations, science, taxpayers, the US, and the world; the tl;dr summary is stakeholders would each experience negative outcomes. This short piece starts to consider the impact on scholarly societies — not because they are the only stakeholder — but because they are, by definition, by governance, and by operations, representative of the values and practices communities determine are important to advancing a discipline. Societies were conceived and founded by disciplinary communities, individuals who came together and aligned on how to best advance the discipline. Today, when done well, they are led by community-centered governance working in a productive partnership with operational staff; in the case of my organization, scientists from the biological and biomedical community. The academic value of this partnership is tremendous and yet not well-quantified. We can, and should, better define the value-add, starting with these two broad brushstrokes that demonstrate the clear economic value of scholarly societies."