Annual General Meeting Thursday 18th April 2013
1. ERA Ranking for the Proceedings.
The proceedings of the ASSCT conferences have no ERA (Excellence in Research, Australia) ranking. These rankings are used to distribute research funds between research organisations and individual researchers. It has been indicated that one obstacle to obtaining an ERA ranking for our proceedings is that only ASSCT members have access to the ASSCT web site and the ASSCT publications. To help obtain an ERA ranking whilst still providing some protection of the intellectual property of the contributors to the proceedings, the executive have supported retaining member only access to the most recent three years of ASSCT proceedings.
The Executive has decided to implement this and would like this meeting to ratify this decision.
After some discussion, a vote was taken and the majority of the members present supported the executive’s decision. (2 against)
2. Membership Entitlements.
The executive considered the situation where an individual or organisation was provided with full membership privileges when they became a member of the society. This includes full access to all of the Society’s publications. It was determined that access for the first year of membership be restricted and that new members have access to the current year’s proceedings (USB) and to those publications more than three years old. In their second year of membership, these members would obtain full access to all of the Society’s publications.
The Executive has decided to implement this and would like this meeting to ratify this decision.
After some discussion, a vote was taken and the majority of the members present supported the executive’s decision. (23 for, 13 against)
3. Reduced membership fees for retired members.
The cost of membership for members who have been members of the society for at least 15 years and who have now retired and are not in active employment was reduced to $50.
The Executive has decided to implement this and would like this meeting to ratify this decision.
There was unanimous support for this initiative.