Sue Haig

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.

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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.