Please call the AAR at 1-404-727-3049 during business hours.

Membership dues are calculated automatically in the Online Dues System, and are printed on the membership forms, which you can find on the Joining or Renewing menu, or which you can have faxed to you by calling 1-404-727-3049. For convenience, however, the table of dues is reproduced below.

AAR dues are on a sliding scale based on income. Please refer to the chart below for specific rates:

Annual Income (in US Dollars) AAR Professional AAR Retired $100,000 + $220 $220 $60,000 – $99,999 $165 $165 $20,000 – $59,999 $110 $110 under $20,000 $55 $55 Student $55 Special International1 $15

1 International Scholars working or residing outside those countries designated as high income by the World Bank may take advantage of a discounted rate of $15 plus international postage. Members from the following countries are not eligible: United States, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Korea, Luxembourg, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Slovak Republic, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom.

AAR membership is based on the calendar year, January 1 – December 31. To continue membership benefits without interruption, current members should renew for the next year by December 31. New members who join throughout the year are able to request previously released issues of JAAR.

In August 2009, the AAR revised its dues structure. The AAR reduced the number of membership categories to six. The AAR also initiated the first dues increase since 2001. The increase was necessary to cover increased costs and to continue to provide a high level of member services.

You can change your contact information by logging into My AAR. Once you have logged in, select Change Contact Information.

You can get a receipt for your membership by logging into My AAR. Once you have logged in, select Your Renewal History.

The online database is not the official database of the AAR. Rather – for security reasons – it is merely a subset of the official database containing information necessary for members to see some individualized information and to look up records in the online Membership Directory.

You will see your information updated online one day after it is processed into the official membership database (which stored on computers in the AAR executive offices). For online payments, update of the official database usually happens within three business days. For dues submitted by check on paper forms, it can take a couple of weeks. The online database is refreshed by an automatic procedure that is scheduled to run at about 3:30 AM Eastern Time every day.

If you are renewing online for the current calendar year, you will receive a temporary ID that will allow you access to several important members-only functions (e.g., Job Postings, Annual Meeting registration, the Membership Directory) while you wait for processing on your renewal to be completed.

If we have your current e-mail address on file, you can retrieve your AAR member ID from the My AAR page. The member ID will be sent via e-mail to that address within a few minutes.

If you no longer have access to the e-mail address in the AAR database, please contact us at +1-404-727-3049 or membership@aarweb.org. To expedite the process, please include the address and e-mail we have on file.

Membership renewal mailings are prepared on the schedule that our mailing services require; members unfamiliar with sending bulk mailing are often unaware of the lead time required in getting ready for communications of this sort. It is not uncommon for a month to pass between the time that an address list is sent to the mail house and the time that a mailing is delivered (longer for addresses outside the U.S.).

Obviously, the mailing will reflect the membership status on the date it was prepared, not on the date it was received. Thus, the member who has renewed after the mailing was prepared should still expect to receive the renewal notice.

You can check your membership status at any time by reviewing the My AAR. (You will need to log in; if you have lost your member ID, please see the question on this page, "I don't remember my member ID. What now?")

If the Members-Only Menu does not reflect your correct membership status and it has been at least five days since you renewed, please call us at 1-404-727-3049.

For most online services (e.g., Job Postings, the Membership Directory, Annual Meeting registration) persons who join or renew online will have immediate access via a temporary ID that is provided on the confirmation page.

Persons who submit their membership forms by mail or fax will have access the day after the materials are processed; under most circumstances this processing will take less than a week – but at heavy renewal times (the beginning of the year, and the month after fall renewal notices are sent) it may take longer.

A notice will be sent, usually within a week, confirming the membership and providing the member ID.

Members will be placed on the mailing lists for the next issues of JAAR and Religious Studies News. (But please note that if you join after materials have been provided to the mail house, but before the issue is placed in the mail, you will not receive that issue automatically; in this case, you will have to request it as a back issue.) As soon as the membership form is processed, members can request back issues of all publications using our Request Replacement of Undelivered Materials form.

Whenever you submit a membership application or renewal to the AAR, it takes a few days to process – even if it is submitted online. As a benefit to members who may be joining in the hope of getting immediate access to one service or another, we provide temporary IDs to members who pay their dues online for the current year. (You don't need a temporary ID if you are paying for next year.)

The temporary ID does not allow access to all members-only functions of the website – but it does allow access to some of the functions that our members desire with the most immediacy, notably Job Postings, the Membership Directory, and (at the appropriate times of year) Annual Meeting registration.

The temporary ID is good for twenty-one days, which will be enough time for the regular member ID to be assigned or reactivated.

Subscribers who arrange for Oxford University Press (OUP) journals directly through the publisher receive a subscriber number, which they can use for online access to the journal(s) to which they have subscribed. Therefore, when browsing the JAAR page on the OUP website, you may be prompted for a subscriber number.

Oxford University Press publishes the Journal of the AAR and sends it to AAR members, but AAR members do not receive individual subscriber numbers. Instead, AAR members have access to the JAAR information on the OUP website by logging in first, using their AAR member IDs, to the Oxford University Press – JAAR page on the AAR website.

If you do not know your AAR member ID, please see the question above, I don't remember my member ID. What now?

AAR membership is based on the calendar year, January 1 - December 31.

Because of the substantial discount for members in Annual Meeting registration, most people who are not yet members, but who wish to attend the Annual Meeting, find that it is advantageous to join – even in late November – in order to receive this discount. We make every effort to be certain they understand that the membership will expire on December 31, but invariably some Annual Meeting registrants forget and are surprised to receive a renewal letter soon after joining. We ask that they recall that this was a purposeful decision that saved them money at the time of Annual Meeting registration.

Please note that even if you are not joining at the beginning of the year, we make every effort to provide the full year's worth of benefits: Notably, you can go to the Request Replacement of Undelivered Materials page to request back issues of the Journal of the AAR and other publications you have missed (we make an effort to print a sufficient number of extra copies, but some supplies may run out) and you are eligible to attend the Annual Meeting at the fully discounted member rate (without having the discount prorated for your period of membership).

Even if you are not joining at the beginning of the year, we make every effort to provide the full year's worth of benefits: Notably, you can go to the Request Replacement of Undelivered Materials page to request back issues of the Journal of the AAR, Religious Studies News, and other publications you have missed (we make an effort to print a sufficient number of extra copies, but some supplies may run out); you will have access to Job Postings without having to wait until the beginning of the year; and you will be able to attend the Annual Meeting at the fully discounted member rate, a discount which covers the cost of membership in most cases.

Some membership forms distributed in last few months of the year have two columns for the totals, one labeled for the current year, and the other labeled for the coming year. If you are not a current member (either never having joined, or having let your membership lapse) and write your totals in the column for the coming year, we apply your membership to that year.

Similarly, in late months of the year, the online renewal system is set to give you a choice of joining for the current year, the coming year, or both. If you join for the coming year, of course, then your membership does not become active until January 1 of that year.

If you intended to join for the current year, but accidentally indicated that your membership should be applied to the coming year, then we can change the year of the membership. Please note that such adjustments can only go in the direction of later years to earlier years, and not the reverse. Thus, we can reapply (to use an example from the past) 2001 to 2000 – but not 2000 to 2001.

You can check your AAR region by logging into the My AAR page. Once logged in, you will find a "Your Membership Information" box near the top of the screen that will indicate your AAR region. AAR members in the US and Canada are automatically assigned a region based on geographic location.