Don’t call me FRAS
Some time ago I mentioned on this blog that I was resigning my Fellowship of the Institute of Physics as a consequence of the IOP’s blatant dishonesty over its publication policy. In a subsequent post giving further details of my fundamental disagreements with IOP Publishing’s profiteering, I stated that
I will decide in the next few days whether or not to resign also from the Royal Astronomical Society for the same reason.
After giving the matter a lot of thought, I have indeed now decided to resign my Fellowship of the Royal Astronomical Society, of which I have been a Fellow since 1990. The main reason for this decision is that I feel it would be inconsistent to remain FRAS after resigning as FInstP when I have the same problem with both institutions, i.e. the way they fund themselves through exploitative publishing practices.
Here is the email I sent to the Royal Astronomical Society earlier today.
Dear Membership Officer,
After much deliberation about the new policy of the Royal Astronomical Society to charge exorbitant fees for publishing in its journals (especially Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society), I have decided that I cannot in good conscience remain a member of a society that funds itself this way. I therefore resign my Fellowship of the Royal Astronomical Society with immediate effect. Kindly remove me from your membership list. I have cancelled the Direct Debit relating to my subscription.
Regards,
Peter Coles
Other, subsidiary, reasons for resignation include the expense, and the fact that Astronomy & Geophysics, the house magazine of the RAS, one of the few direct benefits of membership, even if it doesn’t have a crossword, only ever arrives in Ireland 6-8 weeks late (if it arrives at all). In any case, since I now live in Ireland, it is much more appropriate for me to participate in the activities of the Astronomical Society of Ireland than the Royal Astronomical Society, which is a UK institution.
As I am no longer a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society, I am no longer eligible to remain a member of the RAS Dining Club, of which I have been a member for 15 years, so I have resigned from that too. It has been in any case difficult and expensive for me to attend the dinners since I moved to Ireland. No more dinners at the Athenaeum for me!
In the Dark 
March 23, 2024 at 3:51 pm
Is there any risk that you might forget you are not a FRAS…?
March 23, 2024 at 3:52 pm
Only on a grant application.
March 23, 2024 at 4:14 pm
My copy of April’s A&G arrived yesterday.
Yes, the IoP and the RAS are profiteering from their journals. They have done so for decades, of course, but the way they are doing so now through article processing charges for authors is very different to the old system of pricey journal subscriptions for institutional libraries.
The old system where institutions paid for access to journals for their researchers provided egalitarian access for researchers within any single institution. Professors and PhD students had the same access to scholarly articles, regardless of status and access to funding. The disparities occurred between institutions. Better funded universities could obtain better access to journals, printed and electronic, than less well funded ones. There was a strong disparity between institutions in wealthy countries and ones in developing countries.
Things will be different with article processing charges. The people who will be most disadvantaged will be those with least access to funding, meaning PhD students and postdocs, and acutely those postgraduates and postdocs working for academics who fail to take action when asked to do something.
I can understand an academic resigning from the IoP and RAS in protest. I respect that decision.
I’ve never joined the IoP myself, partly because of the confusing hierarchy of membership types. I certainly would have joined the IoP had I ever obtained a permanent job in a university, or one with a rolling renewable contract.
In the meantime, I remain a member of the RAS, despite the very high cost, because it is one of the few connections I can keep with the research community. That’s something I, as a former university scientist without an institution, do still value.