«Dear colleague,
We have a unique opportunity this jubilee year of SIEF, a chance to move our field forward, to take a concrete and positive step to strengthen the field and help secure the future of SIEF. I am confident that we will grab it, and I count on your help. With your vote and those of other SIEF members, the flagship journal in our field, Ethnologia Europaea, can become the SIEF journal as of New Year’s Day.
After a full year’s negotiations, we have an agreement with the publisher that gives us every reason to be pleased. According to its terms, all SIEF members will henceforth receive two issues of the journal every year in hard copy in the mail and they will get electronic access to backlist issues; this means we receive and read one another’s latest work and is an important step to creating greater international awareness of the cutting edge within our field(s) and in what directions it is moving. Moreover, the publisher agrees to grant full Open Access (to everyone) to all backlist issues of the journal after a three-year embargo period. In the long run, this may be what is most important, and it continues SIEF’s support for Open Access already evident in its five-year old association with the OA journal Cultural Analysis.
But it means more: SIEF offers to Ethnologia a wide readership, broader distribution, and higher visibility; these are all very good reasons for you to consider submitting your work to the journal. In turn, Ethnologia offers to SIEF an established, high-ranking, top-notch journal dedicated to its field(s), with great editors, and 47 years of history. Together Ethnologia and SIEF can provide leadership, identity, and a united front for our field(s) in a highly competitive scholarly environment.
In order to help support SIEF’s activities in coming years and to realize the union with Ethnologia, SIEF members must first agree to a raise in annual membership fees with a majority of votes cast online. The current rate of 20€ has been unchanged since the introduction of the euro and is now worth much less than it was at the time. We would need to raise the fees anyway to keep up with costs, which have certainly not gone down; SIEF has since the current rates were set launched a newsletter published twice a year, developed a website and a members’ directory, set up a young scholar prize, and moved to a biennial congress cycle.
Therefore, we now ask you to agree to a new membership rate of 35€. Like the current rate, this rate is flat. However, the proposed new flat rate is still a lot lower than the regular rates of comparable organizations with their own journal like EASA (100€) and the AFS ($110). In fact, the proposed rate is even lower than the lowest membership rate (for the lowest annual income bracket) in EASA (40€) and more or less equivalent to the lowest rate of the AFS (40$).
For this low flat rate, you help keep SIEF going as a strong professional organization, you participate in the SIEF community and shape the future of our fields.
Specifically, membership gives you the right:
– To present at the biennial SIEF International Congress and take part in the conversations that move our fields forward
– To set up and participate in SIEF Working Groups
– To attend other SIEF events
– To compete (and propose your candidates) for the SIEF Young Scholar Prize
– To vote at General Assemblies and in online votes
– To elect the Executive Board
– To stand for election to the Executive Board
– To receive the semi-annual SIEF journal, Ethnologia Europaea
– To receive the semi-annual SIEF Newsletter
– Support Open Access to backlist issues of Ethnologia Europaea
– Support Open Access to all volumes of Cultural Analysis (associated with SIEF)
SIEF’s board counts on your support to help us take this important step forward for our field(s), for the society, and for the journal. Next week, the election will open online and it stays open for two weeks; you will receive another e-mail one week from now, on December 8, with a link to the voting site. Please vote yes, and if the majority of votes cast are like yours, we reposition SIEF as our common professional organization in a sound way for the near future and from spring 2015 on you will personally start receiving the issues of our flagship journal Ethnologia Europaea
On behalf of the SIEF board, sincerely,
Valdimar Hafstein, SIEF President »
Mais informações: http://www.siefhome.org/about/ballot.shtml