Society Memberships And Benefits

Question

[Pappu]

I am sorry if this question is off the topic. I am searching for some prestigious society memberships in Bioinformatics, Gernomics and Biophysics. Let me know the membership fees and benefits if you are members of any society. Previously I was a member of the Biophysical Society. Thanks.

[Chris Miller]

I would add that in my experience, no one places any prestige on society memberships. If you want to join to get the newsletters, or reduced conference prices, then great. No one is going to sort your CV into one pile or another based on your memberships, though.

[DG]

And this. I don't think there is any expectations or prestige placed on what societies you belong to. They can be useful but aren't very necessary.

[Pappu]

Society Membership is not for CV. I think scientists should work together to convey their message to the public. Otherwise we are too isolated from the society.

[DG]

In my experience most societies don't do very much in this regard. Don't get me wrong I think society membership can be good and I think communicating science to the public is very important, but the two aren't exactly very correlated. If that is your primary concern than you are better off looking for some organizations, particularly local ones, that focus on science outreach and communication.

Answer 1

[DG]

The International Society for Computational Biology is the biggest Computational Biology/Bioinformatics society. It hosts it's main conference every year but is also a sponsor for many different smaller meetings for more specialized topics or for specific regions. No idea for biophysics and then for Genomics I would say it would depend on what specifically you are interested in. There are plenty of organism specific type societies and meetings. If you are interested in evolutionary aspects of genomics the Society for Molecular Biology and Evolution is a good choice.

[Madelaine Gogol]

The main benefit I'm aware of for this is cheaper registration for ISMB. If I plan on attending ISMB, I usually sign up for ISCB at the same time, then let the membership lag in years I don't go.

[Michael]

The discount is about 50 -100$, that's the main reason they have a lot of members ;)

[Neilfws]

Indeed the sole benefit of any society membership is discounted registration fees for meetings.

[Casey Bergman]

Depending on the society (e.g. GSA, SMBE, Genetics Society) there are sometimes other benefits, e.g. reduced page charges for society journals, free job ads, access to travel funds or small grants. But on the whole I agree with other commenters that Society membership is not very important in the modern age and is by no means a hallmark of distinction.