Professional Society Membership Among Early-Career Physics and Astronomy PhDs

Report highlights

• Early-career members kept their professional society memberships because they valued the networking opportunities, discounts, and career resources. They were more likely than non-members to work with collaborators and mentors and feel they are progressing more quickly in their careers.
• Former members primarily left because membership was too expensive for their current financial situation, or because they felt membership was no longer relevant after they transitioned to industry and other fields.
• Many former members have an “on-again, off-again membership” relationship; only joining in years they plan to attend conferences and canceling during a non-attendance year.
• For early-career physics and astronomy PhDs who never joined a society, many did not see how society membership could benefit them. Others never joined because of a lack of knowledge and community ties. They reported that they were never invited to join a society or did not know the society existed.

Early-career scientists are essential to the future growth and development of professional science and engineering societies, and yet, literature shows many early-career scientists never join societies or leave shortly after becoming members (The Wiley Network, 2024 ). Joining a professional society is mutually beneficial for both early-career scientists and societies. Through professional societies, early-career members get access to important networks, resources, and leadership opportunities that advance their career, and give back to their field and community (Porter, Oman, & Owens, 2025 ).

What makes this project distinctive is our engagement with three groups: current members, former members, and never members (Table 1). For professional societies, obtaining insights from former and never members is a difficult task. By sending surveys to a wide population of PhD graduates in physics and astronomy, we were able to hear from respondents in these groups and make comparisons between current society members and non-members. Survey invitations were sent to over 9,000 individuals who earned physics and astronomy PhDs between 2017 and 2023. Of the 1,737 who responded, 47% reported being a member of at least one professional society at the time of the survey, 37% reported they were former members who did not currently belong to any society, and 16% had never been members of any society. Although this study focuses specifically on physics and astronomy PhDs, the findings are likely relevant to other physical science fields and professional science and engineering societies more broadly.

Table 1

The most commonly reported society memberships were with the American Physical Society (APS) (59%) and the American Astronomical Society (AAS) (24%) (Table 2). In addition, among current society members, about 1/3 reported memberships with multiple societies. See the PDF attachment at the end of the report for a list of the 91 other societies that respondents reported memberships with.

Table 2

In this report we explore:

• The demographic differences between professional society members and non-members
• When early-career physics and astronomy PhDs joined a professional society
• Why early-career physics and astronomy PhDs value professional societies
• How career outcomes differ between members and non-members
• Why some early-career physics and astronomy PhDs leave professional societies
• Why other early-career physics and astronomy PhDs have never joined any professional societies
  

Demographic Differences Between Members and Non-Members

We compared the demographic characteristics of current professional society members and non-members. Non-members were defined as individuals who reported no current society memberships, and included both former members and never members. Respondents employed in academia were more likely to be society members than those employed in industry (Table 3), and women were more likely to be society members than men (Table 4). These findings were statistically significant in a chi-square analysis. See the Methodology section at the end of the report to read more details about the demographics of the whole sample of respondents.

Table 3

Table 4

There were no significant differences in membership likelihood by race or ethnicity, citizenship status, or residence outside the United States.

When Early-Career Members Joined a Professional Society

We asked early-career society members about when they joined a professional society, and 92% of respondents reported joining during their undergraduate or graduate education (Figure 1). This underscores the importance of introducing students to professional societies early and often.

Figure 1

Why Early-Career Physics and Astronomy PhDs Value Professional Societies

We presented current society members a list of professional society benefits and asked which benefits were most valuable to them. The top two membership benefits were discounts for meetings and conferences and networking opportunities (Figure 2). Members are drawn to both the transactional benefits and the deeper, relational benefits.

Figure 2

In open-ended responses, respondents included additional reasons for continuing as a member in a society:

• Journal discounts and reduced publication fees
• Job searching resources
• Society leadership and volunteering opportunities
• Increased sense of belonging and identity
• Support for the society, its mission, advocacy efforts, and their broader field
  

How Career Outcomes Differ Between Members and Non-Members

To further understand the career benefits of professional society membership, we conducted a series of regression analyses comparing career outcomes of current society members and non-members. For each model, we looked at the effect of professional society membership, as well as the effects of other factors that could provide alternate explanations for the results, including gender identity, career sector, US citizenship status, career field, and satisfaction with their employer. More detailed descriptions of analyses are in the Methodology section.

The analysis results are shown in Figure 3. Members and non-members did not differ significantly in career satisfaction nor how well informed they felt about their field. However, after accounting for the other factors included in the models, membership status was significantly associated with several important aspects of career development. Members were more likely to report regularly collaborating with others, participating in mentorship, having access to resources that helped them stay current in their field, and progressing more quickly in their careers than their peers. These findings show associations between membership and career experiences; however, those relationships are not necessarily causal.

Figure 3

Our interpretation for these findings is twofold:

• Societies provide more opportunities for collaborations and mentorships, while at the same time,
• Individuals who join societies are more likely to value relationship building.

Having a stronger network of professional relationships may contribute to reporting faster career progression, although more research is needed on this point.

Why Some Early-Career Physics and Astronomy PhDs Leave Professional Societies

We asked all physics and astronomy PhD recipients if they ever discontinued a professional society membership in the past, and 46% of respondents had done so. Some who discontinued membership joined a different society, while others did not and remained non-members.

As shown in the chart below, individuals leave professional societies primarily due to concerns about costs and relevance to their current career (Figure 4). In contrast to the benefits section above, most reasons for leaving were more transactional and pragmatic in nature (like pricing), suggesting that these individuals may not have felt or experienced a deeper sense of community compared to those who remained in the society.

Figure 4

The open ended-comments told a more complex story of “On-again, off-again memberships.” Out of the 434 respondents who left comments, 22% of them reported joining a society only in a year when they planned to attend a conference and canceled their membership to save money in other years. Similarly, others only joined right before publishing in a society journal or only when applying for a grant and canceled their membership afterwards until they needed it again. The decision to discontinue membership is often not final.

The open-ended comments also expanded on the reasons for their answers in the figure above.

Too expensive. Former members reported various reasons for being unable to afford membership. Their job situation became unstable, they couldn’t afford it, their employer or grant no longer paid for membership, or they no longer received free or discounted student/early-career membership rates. Some respondents had too many memberships and needed to cut back to save money.

Benefits not worth the cost. Former members reported not using benefits regularly enough, and, in some cases because they did not have enough time to use them. Others felt they could get the same networking and career resources for free elsewhere, and a few former members were unsatisfied with the current benefits being offered.

No longer relevant. Many former members discontinued membership when they left academia for industry or left for another scientific field. Some industry and government employees were unable to share their work at conferences due to employer policies and some reported their employers were less supportive of membership.

Leaving a field or position may open new opportunities for membership. Some respondents left one society but joined new ones that were more relevant.

Did not feel welcome. Some respondents felt a lack of connection or felt undervalued in the society. A few respondents discontinued their membership because they no longer trusted society leadership and disagreed with their society’s overall direction.

Why Some Early-Career Physics and Astronomy PhDs Have Never Joined Professional Societies

About 16% of respondents had never joined a professional society. When we asked them why, most of these respondents saw no benefit to membership (Figure 5). Over half of these respondents reported they had never been invited to one, and other respondents reported they were unaware of their field’s professional societies. In the open-ended comments, some respondents reported they never joined because they moved outside the US or because their other collaborators already had membership and could access the benefits through them.

Figure 5

Conclusions

Early-career members value a wide range of benefits of society membership. They value both transactional benefits, such as discounts and conference attendance, and deeper, relational benefits, such as networking, mentoring others, and supporting their broader field. This reflects similar studies that show tangible benefits bring members in, and intangible and relational benefits retain members over time (McKinley Advisors, 2024 ).

Still, many early-career physics and astronomy PhDs leave society memberships or never join societies. While professional societies likely cannot address every reason for leaving, such as members changing fields or positions and leaving one society for another, this research suggests several key ways that societies can proactively address some of the issues identified in this in this study.

• Further marketing of professional societies to students. Over 92% of early-career members joined during undergraduate or graduate education. Over 20% of those who never joined didn’t know these societies existed. Increased marketing to students may improve overall society awareness.
• Emphasize community benefits and advertise using existing networks. Members are more engaged when they have a sense of community and belonging. Many who did not join reported they were never invited or did not know anyone in the society. Encouraging members or society ambassadors to share their membership status and society resources with others may help recruit new members.
• Clarify value to current and potential members working in industry. Many former members left because they felt the society was no longer relevant to their industry positions. Increasing industry presence within societies may make membership more attractive to individuals working outside of academia.

Methodology

The Early-Career Survey of PhD Physicists and Astronomers was sent to over 9,000 early-career PhD recipients. Early-career was defined as anyone who received their highest degree within seven years, which included PhD recipients who earned their degree between 2017 and 2023. PhD recipient emails were obtained from physics and astronomy departments as part of our annual Degree Recipient Follow-up Survey. Of the 9,721 sent, 6,450 emails were still valid and 1,737 individuals responded to the survey, resulting in a 27% response rate for individuals with valid emails. Emails were obtained from departments and faculty advisors before their graduation. Invalid email addresses could be due to disuse, cancellation, or lack of access to former emails.

Sample Demographics. The survey collected several different demographic characteristics from respondents including career sector, gender identity, residency status, and citizenship status. For career sector, 42% of respondents worked in the private sector, 40% worked in academia, 13% worked in government, and 5% worked in other sectors. 74% of respondents identified as men, 24% as women, and 2% as an additional gender identity. For residency status, 85% of respondents were US residents, while 15% were not. Lastly, 70% of respondents reported that they were US citizens and 30% reported that they were not US citizens.

Regression Analyses. Binary logistic regressions were done in R Studio. Career outcome questions either had “yes"/"no” responses or were recoded into two categories. “Strongly disagree”, “disagree”, and “neither agree nor disagree” were combined into one category, and “strongly agree” and “agree” in a second category. This was done to examine the impact of membership on positive attitudes about career outcomes. The independent variables in the model included gender identity (man or woman, additional gender identity groups were too small to be included), US citizenship status (US or non-US), career sector (academia, government, industry, or other), career field (physics/astronomy, or another field), and employer satisfaction (an average score across four items assessing if employer is fair, coworkers are respectful, manager is supportive, and provides professional development support).

Qualitative Analyses. Open-ended comments about the reasons why respondents remained in member societies or why respondents left member societies were analyzed using grounded theory methodologies. Comments were open coded by two coders, and similar codes were combined during focused coding. Coding was done using Atlas.ti software.

References

McKinley Advisors (2024). Membership reset: Delivering on the promise of membership. Retrieved at https://www.mckinley-advisors.com/resource/membership-reset .

Porter, A.M., Oman, J., & Owens, T. (2025). Building up the next generation of scientific society leaders. AIP. Doi 10.1063/sr.b780e68c14 .

The Wiley Network (2024). The future for societies starts with early-career researchers. Retrieved at https://www.wiley.com/en-us/network/publishing/societies/member-engagement/the-future-for-societies-starts-with-early-career-researchers .