Constitution

Quick Summary

The AaRC community aims to bring together early career researchers applying genomic approaches to ancient animal remains and nucleotide-preserving material.

By providing an inclusive environment, AaRC will promote knowledge exchange and collaboration between researchers regardless of their institutional or disciplinary background; facilitate the establishment of community-led standards, best practices and resources; and provide a platform for the sharing of research and knowledge.

To maximise collaboration, AaRC encourages participation by researchers from outside the ancient genomic field, particularly with archaeological and paleontological backgrounds.

AaRC is envisioned to be primarily run by and for early career researchers (graduate students, post-doctoral researchers, and early group leaders), but researchers of all career stages are welcome to join and participate in the community.

AaRC initiatives and events are supported by a Steering Committee but are often led by AaRC members; reach out if you have ideas or are interested in helping

AaRC membership is free, but donations may be requested – and if you are interested in supporting AaRC financially, please reach out to the Steering Committee!

Definition of AaRC and history

AaRC stands for Animal aDNA Research Community. We are a community of researchers from around the world focusing on applying genomic approaches to ancient animal remains and nucleotide-preserving material.

We aim to openly share, primarily within but not restricted to online community spaces, knowledge and experience to find solutions to common challenges and obstacles that the field faces.

We are a young organisation, but we hope to run various collaborative projects for the benefit of the whole animal paleogenomics community and to progress the field. We plan to have various events to improve networking.

The idea of AaRC originated in 2024 when a group of researchers decided to start a community to create further collaboration and networking; to help foster growth of the field through the dissemination of knowledge and data; to provide a space for Early Career Researchers to share early work; and to establish subfield-specific standards and norms.

Location

Our main community space is Slack. We intend for there to be both online and in-person events as the community grows. We will keep information about the community archived on our website, along with information on how to get involved.

Membership

We welcome all early stage career researchers and pre-doctoral students, as well as Principal Investigators (PIs) and other senior researchers, to join our community. However, the community aspires to be of particular use and as a venue of support for early career researchers; thus, we encourage PIs to not monopolise discussions.

All members of our community are obliged to follow our code of conduct. Before joining the community be sure to read and understand what this entails. This code of conduct outlines our expectations for all those who participate in our community, as well as the consequences for unacceptable behaviour. All members of AaRC are required to agree and comply with this code of conduct. Safety officers are responsible for enforcing this code within the community, including dealing with any violations, and act as designated points of contact for concerns or reports of code of conduct violation. We expect cooperation from all participants to help ensure a safe and positive environment for everybody.

To report any violations of this code of conduct within activities in the scope of the community, please reach out to our safety officers whose contacts can be found at the code of conduct. An anonymous reporting form is also available here. The actions taken by the safety officers would depend on the gravity of the action via a case by case assessment, and they are entitled to remove a member from the community should the behaviour in question be unacceptable to morality.

Initiatives

The community does not only serve as a place for members to communicate and exchange knowledge but also as a platform to start initiatives and collaborations.

These are some recurrent initiatives:

New initiatives and projects are highly encouraged. For that reason a Steering Committee (see description below) was established to aid the projects/initiatives to reach their goals by providing ideas, support and advice.

Finances

There is no membership fee to join the AaRC community. However, opportunities for voluntary donations will be presented in community-wide AaRC meetings. We are financially supported by voluntary donations by members and research group leaders. If you are able to contribute financially and would like to support the AaRC community, please contact the treasurer.

Constitution

The constitution (this document) outlines the structure and information about the AaRC community. The constitution is a living document which will be updated as needed to fit the needs of the AaRC community. It is primarily maintained by the Steering Committee, but other members can make suggestions by reaching out to the Steering committee and advocate for changes.

AaRC Steering Committee

Definition

Definition - Steering Committee The Steering Committee is an advisory board that provides support, guidance and oversight of particular issues or projects within the context of the community.

Currently the steering committee is temporary with an aim of forming the community and launching it in April 2024. The temporary committee was formed in Jan 2024 after a call for volunteers. There will be a call to members to form a new steering committee in the summer of 2024. It is expected that there will be a level of continuity from the temporary committee to the new steering committee.

The Steering Committee meets once a month. For quorum to be met 51% of committee members must be present.

The tasks of the elected Steering Committee will involve brainstorming and proposing new initiatives and helping new initiatives get off the ground, by increasing engagement and support for AaRC members and events, helping with ongoing organisation efforts, publicization of AaRC, and sourcing funds for the maintenance of AaRC.

The Steering Committee is formed by teams consisting of the managing team: a chair and a secretary, a treasurer, a social media team and an engagement team. The teams meet on a regular basis to divide responsibilities and set up a communication method that ensures tasks are fulfilled.

The current members of the temporary Steering Committee can be found here.

Description of the Roles

Management team: Formed by the chair and the secretary. Responsible for ensuring the committee functions smoothly and achieves its goals.

Chair: leads meetings, sets agendas, moderates discussions and delegates tasks to volunteer members. They represents the AaRC community in any official meetings or interviews. They are also responsible for having an overview of the various initiatives by maintaining a close communication with the treasurer, social media and engagement teams. Allows for discussion around long-term topics, needs to be forward thinking on this end.

Vice-Chair: Supports the chair and other members of the committees. They step in when the chair is unavailable

Secretary: Takes meeting minutes, sends them out via slack when they are ready, makes sure that assignments are noted. Organisational responsibilities (ie keeping google docs in order, annotating the minutes with required links, possibly doing same for the agenda ahead of time).

Treasurer: The treasurer is responsible for managing the funds, for the communication related to funds and responsible for allocating funding to initiatives by serving as a line of communication between the organising committees and the Steering Committee. The treasurer is also responsible to collect funds as well as finding grant opportunities to continue to fund AaRC initiatives.

Social media team: The social media team is responsible for the outreach of the community, by tweeting, emailing as well as updating the website. Social media officers will announce new initiatives, conferences, papers and jobs that are relevant for the AaRC community.

Engagement team: The engagement officers are responsible for coming up with new initiatives (projects, summer schools, outreach activities, etc.) and propose them to the community. They will also oversee ongoing initiatives, such as the seminar series, and provide support for them to reach their goals. They will ensure that the initiative is known in the community, as well as outside the community together with the media team. As well as suggesting potential funding sources for the initiative, by engaging with the treasurer team.

Additional roles for the temporary Steering Committee include:

Time in Office

The temporary Steering Committee will be in office until elections in the summer of 2024.

The elected Steering Committee will be in office for a period of two years, after which a new committee will be chosen. Roles are decided collectively at the start of a new term.

How are Steering Committee members chosen?

Community members will be encouraged to volunteer when the term for the current Steering Committee is reaching an end. The volunteers should identify specific positions within the steering committee that they are interested in. If a team lacks volunteers, the current officers will nominate a person to substitute them. Ideally, positions will be filled by early career researchers. If there is a surplus of volunteers an election will be held using a first-past-the-post system.

If a member of the Steering Committee needs to vacate office early, a call will be made to the Community to find a replacement, if a team lacks volunteers the current officer will nominate a person to substitute them. If there is a surplus of volunteers an emergency election will be held. The exception will be the Chair: to help ensure continuity, the Vice-Chair will be promoted to Chair and a replacement for Vice-Chair will be nominated by the chair appointed.

If a committee member is in violation of the code of conduct a vote will be taken to remove them from position by the steering committee. In this instance quorum (51%) must be met for the vote to take place and for removal a supermajority needs to be found.