Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research

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You are in:  Home » About SCAR » Introducing SCAR

Benefits of Membership of SCAR

Introducing SCAR

• Promotes the need for scientific research related to Antarctica and the Southern Ocean and the important role of this polar region in global environmental change.
• Provides a forum for international coordination, bringing together investigators from different countries and different disciplines to engage in coordinated and collaborative research activities.
• Promotes and facilitates inter- and multi-disciplinary research, and a pan-Antarctic approach.
• Helps to make Antarctic and Southern Ocean science more accessible to the wider scientific community.
• Underpins major syntheses of Antarctic data and scientific concepts that could not be achieved otherwise.
• Exposes scientists to new ideas and ways of looking at scientific issues, offering opportunities for scientists to learn from each other, and stimulating the emergence of new ideas.
• Provides opportunities to build partnerships with key global research organisations having a polar dimension (like the new ones with WCRP, SCOR and the IGOS Partners).
• Enables research that would not be possible working solely through a single country.
• Enables Members to encourage the involvement of their scientists in international activities.
• Provides a route through which nations that are still developing their Antarctic and Southern Ocean scientific research capabilities and infrastructure can find partners to help enhance their capacity.
• Provides an opportunity for scientist from all countries to present their findings in international fora.
• Provides an opportunity to comment on proposals for scientific research activities as they develop.
• Helps to ensure that scientific activity conducted in the Antarctic is in keeping with the terms of the Antarctic treaty.
• Provides the corporate memory and expertise to guide the scientific research needed to support the activities of the Antarctic Treaty.
• Provides seed-corn funding for international collaboration (as a basis for leveraging extra funds from agencies).
• Helps to maintain networks and collaborative efforts between meetings.
• Acts as a facilitator, helping bottom-up scientific research initiatives gain an international "seal of approval" that may carry weight in obtaining national funds.
• Provides an excellent biennial forum through the new open science conference, thereby providing a means of exposing young researchers to Antarctic science.
• Provides a useful communications vehicle through the recently updated web site.
• Helps the Members respond reasonably speedily to new international science agendas.

Applications for Membership of SCAR are considered by the biennial meeting of the SCAR delegates. Applications must be made at least six months in advance. Members should be national bodies affiliated with ICSU (or bodies to which the national committee affiliated to ICSU has delegated responsibility for interacting with SCAR, or by some other means if a country has no national organisation adhering to ICSU, in which case advice should be sought from the Secretariat)

For further information, please email info@scar.org.