PainScience.com Membership Page

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PainScience.com has never been a non-profit website, but it has always been an idealistic, low-profit website, a small business that earns me just enough to take care of my family. The site is entirely reader-supported by book sales, memberships, and donations (and never any ads, ever, because modern internet advertising is super gross). If you value this resource, please consider a membership — you’ll support a fine source of high quality health science journalism, keeping it ad-free and independent… and you’ll get extra content for your money.

~ Paul Ingraham, PainScience publisher
Vancouver, Canada

Buy PainSci Membership
^$6/month or ^$60/year USD

Cancelling membership is easy, and will stop future charges.

Membership benefits

• Full premium subscription to the PainSci Updates newsletter, with your own full-text RSS feed and premium post archives. Free subscribers get 1-3 posts per week, members get an extra, beefier post every week or two. There are over a thousand regular post archives ❐ going back more than a decade.
• Access to several substantial members-only areas in the main PainSci library — like articles within articles. In every case, the free content is still substantial — but members get more. More dorky detail, more references. As of early 2022, there are ten major members-only areas around the site, with more major and many more minor ones coming soon.
• Audio versions of seven “classic” PainSci articles, all reader favourite for 10-20 years.
• Membership does not hide advertisements (as so many membership programs do), because there are no ads to hide, never have been, and never will be. But I can hide first party “ads,” my own prompts for donations/subscriptions — members do not have to see most of those.

More benefits coming, er, “soon”

The membership program launched in December 2021, and is critical for the future of the website. I have added many features to membership since then… but it is a small business, and nothing happens fast. As I continue to chip away at it, here are some other benefits I am considering. These are definitely not guaranteed yet! But at least a couple of them are almost certain to happen eventually:

• In addition to large members-only content areas, I will probably also set aside many smaller sections of articles just for members — a bunch of interesting digressions and embellishments.
• Website features like reading-position bookmarks, a dark mode, and reading history.
• Discounts on books, perhaps increasing with membership duration, until eventually they become free. Also, I hope to work out a way for book customers to earn membership (e.g. buy a boxed set, get a free year of membership, that kind of thing — the ecommerce programming is tricky).
• Ask-me-anything style video meet-ups with readers.
• A directory to connect science-respecting professionals and patients.

No refunds! 🙂

While I do offer refunds for books (and always have), I do not offer membership refunds. Membership is supportive patronage with good perks, not a satisfaction-guaranteed “product.” Please vote with your dollars for good science journalism with conviction! If the content turns out not to be a good fit for you, please just cancel and consider your money well-spent on a good cause.

If you aren’t cool with that up front, it’s not a good match anyway.

Is membership for patients or professionals? Both!

The editorial policy of PainScience.com is to only publish content that can be easily understood and enjoyed by anyone: any kind of professional, or any keen patient. Obviously some content skews a little more one way or the other, but basically it’s all for everyone — and pros always have the option of reading further, or delving into more footnotes.

I could easily justify a more expensive membership for pros, and I might create a pro tier someday. But for now the price is set deliberately at a level that is in the middle: less than I could ask from pros, and maybe a touch high for patients, but just fine for my favourite kind of readers in either category.