Hello and thanks for writing.

Aspidoscelis wrote:

There must be some context here that I'm not aware of. I'm not sure what you're getting at. The number of people publishing in academic journals has only been increasing over the last couple hundred years, and there is no need to belong to any kind of privileged elite. A few journals or scientific meetings associated with academic societies might require you to be a member, but this isn't a terribly onerous or restrictive limitation. I joined the Willi Hennig Society by filling out an online form & paying $10. Joining the American Botanical Society was a little more money ($50? I don't remember now), but certainly nothing prohibitive.

When it comes to availability of scientific journals--this can be something of a problem. Journals are often too expensive for it to be feasible for private citizens to reasonably get good representation of a field. However, that's not much different for those in academia than those outside it, really. I have access to scientific journals because I go to my university & access them electronically or through the paper collections, and any other resident of the state can do the same.

This was in response to a post that has seemed to have disappeared.

Yes, acceptance by societies of individuals of various walks of life is practiced - especially if there are memberships fee to be collected. My apologies if my post seemed to lead overwise.

It is often a case where one of lesser notoriety or connections to a major university finds it a major challenge to publish or describe new species. This was what the original writer was mainly writing about that the post in question was responding to by me.

And yes, it is most sad that free access to knowledge has it's limitations. It is often a road block to scientific progress.
It is not to say it is impossible, but often very difficult or impossible given distances and budgets involved to go to a particular location of research.

Thanks again for writing,
Pilirin

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