I have just discovered this blog where various Independent Scholars’ organisations are mentioned, namely Ronin, NCIS and several others. In fact, Ronin has been mentioned in their tweet which caught my attention. It is curious that IGDORE is not on the list, but that may be because this blogpost is North American-centric. Anyway, it is good to note these Fellow Travelers with whom we share common goals and objectives. 
3 Likes
Thanks for sharing @keithtse! There are actually a few organizations there that I hadn’t heard of before, even though @arika.virapongse and I have been snowballing a list of organizations that support independent researchers.
IGDORE also seems to be more science and less humanities focused than the other organizations on that list, so I assume that is another reason we didn’t end up on their list.
2 Likes
Thanks @Gavin . I think there has been the same trend at Ronin since its inception, and our membership distribution is gradually evening out between the traditional disciplines, as shown in our latest demographic, even though it is still quite natural science-heavy. Are we also tilting the balance at IGDORE too? Just wondering. In any case, let’s champion Independent Scholars and Scholarship in all fields and disciplines!
2 Likes
Good question @keithtse! We did run an Open Science survey at between 2020/21 that gave us the detailed Field of Research break down below (there were 55 respondents, probably about 50% of IGDORE’s affiliates at the time). The largest group of researchers who responded were psychologists.
We don’t actively track the demographics of researchers, but I just made a quick tally across the field listed for IGDORE researcher’s last degree (which doesn’t necessarily match what they would have selected as their field of research in the previous survey). Categorized according to the Ronin demographics chart, IGDORE has (does not add to 100% due to rounding):
- Life Sciences - 27%
- Physics/Math/CS - 27%
- Arts/Humanities - 17%
- Social Sciences -30%
My impression was that the demographics had been moving away from social sciences towards natural sciences, but I didn’t realize that Arts and Humanities researchers were now also quite well represented at IGDORE 
(fyi @global_board)
2 Likes
Social Sciences too are in the majority, and since Socials Sciences and Arts and Humanities are often grouped together, a combined total of 47% is a big representation of the various disciplines, which stands close to Maths/Sciences (54%). Pretty even distribution to me, which is great! 
2 Likes
On the topic of partner organisations for independent scholarship, here is a page on NCIS that lists a few more:
https://www.ncis.org/news/2023/ncis-webinar-journeys-towards-independence
1 Like
https://OpenSci.World is a Canadian non-profit organization that welcomes “homeless” researchers, providing them with an affiliation. It welcomes researches from all the branches of science, worldwide, even for researchers that are just starting their scientific endeavor and have no previous credentials.
3 Likes