Sue Haig

Bob— We are developing a business plan in the following way: 1. Small committees made up of 3-7 members each and from across OSNA societies are drafting ideas, options and costs for the following key areas: a. Management and governance: Sue Haig (chair)b. Publications: chair under revision due to illness of initial chairc. Communications: Dylan Kesler (chair)d. Conservation: Michael Reed (chair)e. Outreach and Education: Amanda Rodewald (chair)f. Financial Management: John Fitzpatrick (chair) 2. The committees are each drafting short reports (less than 10 pages) which I will then merge into a document we will call the draft business plan. This document will be the proposal for discussion at the AOU Council meeting in February 2012. 3. From the AOU perspective, we will discuss the options presented and further refine what we would like to see if the new society were established. 4. We will then send out the proposed business plan to all OSNA societies for their comments and those of members. 5. We (SFO committee chairs) will meet with OSNA presidents or representatives monthly from March until the NAOC to discuss each aspect of the plan. The different societies can enlist comments from their own members as they see fit. 6. A final draft business plan will be presented at the NAOC to the AOU Council with a request for funding the start of SFO. Other societies can choose to join SFO then or later (or never) on whether they want to join our efforts. As for society reps, we are not asking reps to just represent their society. Rather we are asking them to brainstorm like the rest of us as we design SFO. Again, this is not a federation, we are designing a new society. I am sorry I have not contacted Tim. Bob Beason called a few weeks ago and I have had the flu or been traveling since. We are more than happy to have him join one of the committees. I just have not had time to invite him yet. The bottom line is that we are not looking for comments from the societies or the general membership at this time. There will be months and months of time to alter or incorporate new ideas prior to the NAOC and afterwards. We just feel this small committee approach is the most efficient way to get the ball rolling. I ask for your patience with this process. We have devoted many hours since July to develop this first draft. There are many ornithologists from across OSNA working very hard on this. Sincerely, Sue

Ricky--I appreciate the time you have taken to outline your concerns and information needs. There are several major points that I'd like to make in response. 1. As a former AOU president, thus current member of the AOU Council, not to mention AOU member, you have had access to more information and invitations to comment than you are outlining. I believe you were the only living former AOU president (aside from Dick Banks who was ill) not to be in attendance at the Jacksonville council meeting where these ideas were presented and discussed. You also have an invitation to attend the mid-year council meeting, at AOU's expense, to voice your opinion. I do not believe we have heard whether or not you will attend. The announcement of the plan to develop SFO, with the associated powerpoint presentation, has been available on the AOU website, here on the OE website, and there has been an announcement in the OSNA newsletter and in the media. 2. While you seem concerned that, as AOU president-elect, I am responding to the questions about these ideas, you did not suggest who it is you would like to hear from. I developed and chaired the committee to evaluate and develop the future of the AOU and now chair the committee that is developing the plan for SFO. There is no one who knows more about this than I do. Although, I would more than welcome other members of the SFO committees to chime in at any point. 3. It is not novel to think that the issues you outlined are needed--we are working on them now in a business plan format and via committees lead by members of every interested OSNA society. Thus, I cannot answer questions about the details of the Society for Ornithology at this moment. As mentioned previously, committees are drafting outlines that will present various options for moving forward and are researching the costs associated with specific ideas so all societies will have a variety of options to consider. Someone had to do this background work before we could present and evaluate what might be best for AOU or any other OSNA society. 4. We are in a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation here. We were trying to be as open and straight-forward as possible with every OSNA member/society by announcing ideas we were considering so early on. Thus, we proposed our ideas to the council and attendees at the Jacksonville meeting less than 2 weeks after developing them and we announced it to all OSNA societies (via contacting presidents of each society) shortly after the Jacksonville meeting. By doing so, we left ourselves open to criticisms such as you are rendering that we did not have a complete plan. However, had we developed a plan in secret and then announced it with all the details worked out, we would be criticized as well. We thought we would error on the side of openness and take our lumps--which we are doing to some degree. However, I am not lying in telling you how much support we have been sent--mostly by mid-career and younger members—those we most often lose. You need to review our membership trends, and those of the other societies, to get a reality check on what is happening to membership. We need to do something about this. 5. We presented an outline of the process we are following to all OSNA presidents several months ago. It was their responsibility to share with their councils and members as they saw appropriate. I will repeat it below. Overall, I believe a little patience this fall will be rewarded with a detailed plan that will address your concerns and those others have expressed with plenty of time to revise the evolving plan. I hope you can embrace this path we are taking to evaluate our future. Sue DEVELOPMENT OF SFO BUSINESS PLAN Fall 2011: · Develop business plan for SFO February 2012: · AOU Council meets to evaluate business plan. · SFO executive committee solicits comments from interested OSNA societies and AOU members. Other societies can solicit opinions from members as they deem appropriate. Spring –Summer 2012: · SFO executive committee meets monthly via teleconference with interested OSNA society presidents or representatives to revise business plan. · SFO executive committee refines plan as per recommendations from OSNA societies. · SFO Executive committee meets with OSNA presidents at NAOC to further discuss plan. · SFO committee chairs present proposed plan to AOU Council at NAOC with a request to fund the beginning of SFO. · Other OSNA societies can vote to join SFO, reject joining SFO, or choose to join at another time. Fall 2012: · Proceed with development of SFO if business plan is approved by AOU, if not other societies. NOTE: approval to proceed does not mean AOU or any other society will disappear. AOU would continue for a few years while SFO was developed. Other societies would similarly follow this path (more or less) at their discretion.

Allen--the storm is drowning us regardless of whether the Auk is online or not. The world has changed, scientific societies have changed, and we need to change with them or become the Auk itself. I'm not going to repeat the discussion I've had with Dick here as you can read it above. As you suggest, there are better things to do than re-hash points that have been made over and over again. Thus, I'm going back to my day job so I can study birds and not kill trees in the process, Sue

Hi Dick--the bottom line is that we are losing most people to the more topically-centered societies. As you know, organismal biology is not well supported in universities across North America. Many do not even teach taxonomic based courses. Another major function of SFO will be to promote the field of ornithology to universities across N. Am. Can't have ornithologists if there is no training for them. Membership--we believe that online publishing will decrease publication costs which will mean we need fewer members to continue. Currently the AOU endowment is oaying fr the Auk, not the members. Clearly, we should not continue that practice. As part of the business model we are proposing, we would hire an executive director who would spend a significant amt of time working on fund raising and development. We hope/plan that this person would be able to raise enough funds to make paid membership not as important to the survival of the society as we recognize the free access to pubs electronically does cause a steep decline in membership. I should note that AOU has not done significant fund-raising in the past as it takes time and we do not have volunteers or paid staff with the time to do it. This will need to change if we want to succeed in this post-paper journal era. Our efforts are not just aimed at recruiting members for their funds (although it helps). Just as much, we need to have a flourishing field. At this point, that means more than a journal and annual meeting. Since most ornithologists are concerned with conservation, we would like to make the society more attractive to that focus. Of course, that does not mean advocacy nor disregard for traditional studies--just branching out. As for conservation, most members of AOU are involved in conservation efforts and send the fruits of all these efforts to other journals. So once again, the Auk is not getting the best papers anymore. And there is a huge niche for avian conservation papers as Conservation Biology does not publish taxa-specific work unless it addresses a theoretical issue and JWM can only publish so many papers. We feel this new journal will not only get people interested in SFO but will truly contribute to avian conservation. Most members we have lost join SCB. Editorship--there are checks and balances too detailed to go into at this point. OE--will probably be the news magazine. Auk--the name has been an issue of contention for many years. As much as I love the Auk, especially younger authors are not getting the credit they deserve for publishing important papers when the name of the journal is an extinct bird. It is negatively effecting their tenure decisions, hence why not change it? Saying that cavalierly here does not reflect the 6 months of sickness in the pit of my stomach over losing some traditions in ornithology. However, we need to consider this new society to be an evolution of our field into a new era rather than mourning. Or as one Council member stating--this is the Phoenix rising from the ashes. In any event, I believe the train has left the station. We continue to have unprecedented support for our efforts. Sue

Hi Dick--thanks for your note and concern about AOU. This is an awkward format to address all your questions but I will try to do it in a way people can see your questions and my response. Here goes: 1. How this plan and new society will stem the decline in membership, and the decline in finances that results, has not been indicated. The decline in membership is not due to free student memberships --the cohort we lose most are the postdocs and new asst. professors--who never come back. We hope to jumpstart membership in more ways than I can outline here but for starters: A --Be more communicative with members more than we currently are. Our committee spent a great deal of time reviewing professional societies that are undergoing our same challenges and the one aspect all identified as key in their recovery was better and updated communication. This will come about as a result of launching a weekly online newsmagazine/website similar to the Ornithology Exchange, send more frequent emails to members about news in ornithology, b e more active in preparing press releases to important papers published in our journals and our members. B. Launch a far more active conservation program. Chairs Michael Reed and Jeff Walters are working on a far more active and involved conservation effort for every aspect of what the new society will do. We have lost most of our members to SCB and TWS. And...we need to be more involved with conservation in any event. C. Publish online, probably free access, journals where our publication turn around time will be quicker that we are currently and access will be instantaneous--see more under "journals". Funding new initiative: A the idea is to hire an executive director (and later a development director) who will spend significant time fund-raising. We currently have no active fund-raising effort. B. We hope to attract new members or "fallen-away" AOU etc. members who are excited about the new efforts. I've heard from quite a few "fallen away" members who say they are now thinking of coming abck. 3. New Pubs. I'm afraid to say that submissions to the Auk are woefully down. And submissions seem to come primarily from the US and Canada. In 18 mo, I believe there were only 6-7 mss submitted from Europe etc. Everyone seems to have shifted to the Journal of Avian Biology. Our ISI rating is not close to JAB and is below the Ibis at the moment. Thus, while it contributes to our problem, online access to journals is not the major problem with the Auk. On the other hand, one could argue that the AOU endowment could publish the Auk infinitum. However, publishing a journal no one submits to or reads makes it a foolish exercise. So...we are trying to improve this situation in every way we can think of. Thus includes: 1. Changing the journal names so they are more attractive and informative to students and young faculty members that are pre-tenure. The name Auk does not excite deans. Frontiers in Ornithology might do a better job. Changing the name of the Auk is one of the things we have gotten the most positive response on among all the changes we are proposing. 2. Having 4 journals under one editorship (4 asst editors): the idea there is to have one main editor and 4 journals with distinct missions so we can be sure each journal publishes the best papers in its realm. By this, we are trying to avoid the trickle down of papers --a person gets a paper rejected by the Auk and then keeps re-submitting it to other journals until someone finally bites. Our approach would put a halt to that. In addition, adding a conservation journal will, again, make the society more progressive than we have been in the past, make a more substantial contribution to avian conservation, and...we might start getting people to submit to the J of Avian Conservation rather than JWM or Conservation Biology, etc. ++++++++++++++++ Perhaps this is enough for now. The bottomline is we did not trying to revolutionize North American ornithology because we had nothing else to do. We did it to address some cancerous problems that needed to be remedied perhaps 10 years ago. Thanks again for your comments. Please let me know if we need to talk more, Sue

In response to Steve: we have extended an invitation to the Neotropical Ornithological Society and hope to have many Latin American societies join us. We will extend invitations to PIF, DU, etc. once we get our act together -- defined as having a business plan where we know what costs will be, a timetable for tasks to be completed, etc. This is a monumental effort, hence we need to go in stages. However, we are getting great responses from at least the AOU, COS, AFO, and WOS. Other groups are considering their options and waiting until they see a better developed plan--which should be available in mid-February or so.

Thanks, Reed. We will change it as we begin to develop the business plan. I have to remind everyone that we are just (next month) beginning the planning stage for this new initiative and every OSNA society has or will be asked to join in the next week. My travel schedule has prevented me from personally contacting every society. However, I will be finishing this task when I return to the States tomorrow.

Yep--the changes are huge but the support for them has been overwhelming. It takes a while to get used to such drastic changes but ultimately, I believe it will be better for all of us, the birds, and the field of ornithology.