The science blog archive Rogue Scholar is becoming a German non-profit membership organization in 2026. This will help with the governance and sustainability of Rogue Scholar. But what can be the incentives to become a Rogue Scholar member, and under what conditions?

Personal vs. Organizational membership

Membership will be open to all legal entities that support the mission and objectives of Rogue Scholar. Thus, individuals and organizations will be able to become Rogue Scholar members, just as both can publish, read, and/or manage scholarly blogs.

The proposed membership fees will be:

  • individual 25 EUR/year
  • small organization 250 EUR/year
  • supporting organization 2500 EUR/year

Supporting organizations are larger organizations that are able to provide a larger financial contribution to Rogue Scholar, for example funders.

General Assembly and Executive Board

The General Assembly, consisting of each member, or one representative for each member in case of organizational members, will be the constituent body of Rogue Scholar.

The Executive Board shall be appointed by the General Assembly from among the representatives of the Rogue Scholar members. The Executive Board prepares and convenes the General Assembly, presents the annual budget, implements resolutions by the General Assembly, and may appoint working groups.

Incentives for members

Registering a blog with Rogue Scholar, archiving blog posts with Rogue Scholar, or reading blog posts from Rogue Scholar will never require Rogue Scholar membership. Aligning with the Principles of Open Scholarly Infrastructure, membership revenue will be generated from services, not data.

  1. Rogue Scholar members participate in the General Assembly, vote on resolutions, approve the annual budget, and elect the Executive Board.
  2. Some Rogue Scholar members will participate in the activities of the Executive Board or Rogue Scholar working groups.
  3. Rogue Scholar members will receive regular messages from one or more Rogue Scholar mailing lists. These messages may contain information about the Rogue Scholar organization, Rogue Scholar services, or blog posts archived with Rogue Scholar. Individuals who contributed at least 25 EUR to Rogue Scholar in 2025 will receive regular mailing list messages starting next week.
    Initially, there will be three mailing lists:
    * a monthly Rogue Scholar newsletter that started in January 2025,
    * a weekly newsletter with summaries of all German-language posts,
    * a weekly newsletter with summaries of all English-language posts in the OpenAlex subfield Information Systems (currently one of the most popular Rogue Scholar subfields).
    Going forward, I will add more mailing lists, e.g. for other languages and/or other OpenAlex subfields or topics. The mailing lists are opt-in, i.e. you have to confirm the subscription if you want to subscribe to that particular mailing list. To can donate to Rogue Scholar via this link on the footer of every page.
  4. Supporting organization members will regularly receive more detailed information. The details will be worked out in 2026, but may include reports about blogs from grant-funded projects, including summaries of blog posts and the number of page views, downloads, and citations of these blog posts. Please reach out via email if you are interested in this.

Please reach out via Slack, email, Mastodon, or Bluesky if you have any questions or comments.

Rogue Scholar is a scholarly infrastructure that is free for all authors and readers. You can support Rogue Scholar with a one-time or recurring donation or by becoming a sponsor.

References

  1. Fenner, M. (2025, November 3). Rogue Scholar is becoming a German Non-Profit Organization. Front Matter. https://doi.org/10.53731/rftfk-qv692
  2. Fenner, M. (2025, October 20). Rogue Scholar follows the Principles of Open Scholarly Infrastructure (POSI). Front Matter. https://doi.org/10.53731/m65a8-6sm21
  3. POSI Adopters. (2025). The Principles of Open Scholarly Infrastructure v2.0. https://doi.org/10.14454/G8WV-VM65
  4. Fenner, M. (2024, March 13). Rogue Scholar launches project plan for grant-funded projects. Front Matter. https://doi.org/10.53731/2kkkq-p4h51
  5. Fenner, M. (2025, January 27). Starting a Rogue Scholar monthly newsletter and Slack Community. Front Matter. https://doi.org/10.53731/f117g-8r09