Minutes of the SPA Executive Committee Meeting

Sunday, 9 December 2007

Westin San Francisco Market Street Hotel

Recording Secretary, Pete Riley

 

Nancy Crooker notes five absentees, including all three secretaries.  Pete Riley kindly agrees to fill in for Recording Secretary.

 

Robert Winglee, Public Information Report

            Four of the 21 press conferences (a high proportion!) at this meeting will be related to SPA:  The Brightest Night-Shining Clouds Ever Seen, Voyager 2 Proves the Solar System is “Squashed,” New Discoveries About Northern Lights (THEMIS), Recycling Saturn's Rings.

 

Bob McPherron, Agency Night Report

            Two speakers, Dick Fisher and Rich Behnke, will address questions solicited in advance.  Received few, rather uninteresting questions from first request.  Direct e-mail to select opinionated members yielded more controversial ones.

 

Art Richmond's Spring Meeting Report, given by Bob McPherron

            SA has 2 special sessions, SM has 4, and 5 cross division lines.

            Are we getting too many special sessions?  Apparently not.

            Solar Physics Division (SPD) of the AAS will only have general contributions.  Jim Klimchuk, who is organizing SPD sessions, much prefers not having special sessions.

            Special sessions based on programmatic themes have been discouraged both by this committee and by AGU policy, but the SPA community poll came back 4 to 1 in favor of them.  Special sessions on pre-launch missions could be poster sessions.

            Other sections are organizing special sessions consisting of talks from newly-elected SPA Fellows.  Do we want to do this?  Merav Opher mentioned that it might be good for students, but idea was turned down on the grounds that Fellows will already be giving talks and do not need extra scientific exposure.

            Do we wish to change the order of the Bowie Lecture from Van Allen to Parker since the meeting will be joint with the SPD?  Shall we invite Parker in celebration of the 50th anniversary of his 1958 paper predicting a supersonic solar wind?*

            Not many people have been attending spring AGU (now called “Joint Assembly”).  Meetings Committee has changed its focus to be a meeting of the Americas that facilitates participation, in particular, by our neighbors to the South.

 

*Formal motion following report:  Lou Lanzerotti moves that we have the Parker lecture instead of the Van Allen Lecture at Joint Assembly and that we invite Parker, pay his way, and have a special ceremony in his honor.  Jim Burch seconds the motion, and it passes unanimously.

 

Merav Opher, Outstanding Student Paper Awards Report

            At Acapulco Joint Assembly, there were only 26 student papers in SM, 15 in SH, and none in SA.  This contrasts with more student papers the previous year, 27 in SA alone although fewer than this year in SM and SH.  The problem in Acapulco is that many students as well as judges failed to attend.  In the end, awards went only to 4 papers in SM and 1 in SH.  To help combat poor attendance by judges at Fall Meeting, invitations were sent far in advance.  For Fall Meeting, we have 70 SH, 117 SM, and 56 SA student papers.

 

Discussion

            Review process for Chapman Conference proposals has been frustratingly slow, to the point where in one case a contract with a hotel was lost.  Jim Burch, Chair of AGU’s Meetings Committee, replied that problem is being addressed.  Associates will be helping Chapman Conference Chair to speed up reviews.  If there is no improvement by the time of the next committee meeting in April, a new Chapman Conference Chair will be appointed.

 

Gene Bierly, Report from AGU staff liason to SPA

            Kudos to SPA’s outstanding Education and Public Outreach Committee, not least for running the GIFT (Geophysical Information For Teachers) workshops not only at AGU meetings but most recently at the IHY (International Heliophysical Year) conference in Ethiopia!

            This is the 30th year for AGU’s Congressional Science Fellowship Program.  Science Fellow gets hands-on experience on Capitol Hill.  This is a good program to advertise.

            In the public information area, this is the 10th anniversary of the AAAS Mass Media Fellowship Program that the AGU has helped sponsor for 10 years.  The program sends scientists who also have an ability to communicate well to newspapers, TV stations, and radio stations, where they must cover any scientific story that emerges.  It can be a very challenging fellowship.

            AGU President Tim Killeen has put together as special session to pay tribute to the IPCC (International Panel on Climate Change), to be held on Thursday at 1815h.  He invited Governor Schwarzennegger, who would have come except that he had to be out of town that day, and then the mayor of San Francisco, who also had prior commitments.  On Wednesday Susan Solomon will be giving the Bjerknes Lecture on a related topic.

            When paying dues, one now has the option to donate to a section or to various funds, for example, the soon-to-be-established Max Hammond and Basu travel award funds.

            AGU urges its members to attend the once-a-year Congressional Visits Day, when AGU facilitates trips to Capitol Hill to talk to senior Congressional staff members.

 

David Sibeck’s Eos Report, given by Nancy Crooker

            The myriad of problems from last year have mostly been resolved, and editorial policies have changed (see 13 March 2007 issue of Eos).  Corresponding Editors are now advisors, together forming an advisory board, and their duties have been outlined quite clearly.  Four of these duties are active roles for the advisor:  Suggesting topics and authors for invited feature articles, providing news leads that can be followed up by staff reporters, recommending members who should be recognized in the “Geophysicists” column, and preparing short news items or brief reports for consideration by one of the Editors.  New staff members have been hired and given final authority so that not everything needs to await Executive Director Spilhaus’s decisions.

 

Nancy Crooker, More on SPA Poll results

            On the issue of whether or not AGU should publish the votes tally after elections, the SPA community was nearly evenly split, and many of the comments indicated that the issue wasn’t important.  Fred Spilhaus polled both winners and losers of elections, and most voted against publishing tallies.  (Later the AGU Council decided to make the results available only to those who asked for them, essentially maintaining the current policy.)

            Last year, 19% of members voted in elections.  Typical turnouts are in the 10-20% range.  AGU and SPA should do better than that.

            On the issue of how many SPA members publish in AGU compared to non-AGU journals, the ratio is 3:1 for SA and SM members but 1:2.5 for SH members, most likely because Astrophysical Journal is an attractive alternative.  Have asked for but not yet received the data that would determine if this is the way it has always been or if AGU lost SH submissions in the course of switching to electronic publishing and never gained them back.

 

Amitava Bhattacharjee, Report on JGR-Space Physics (click here for complete electronic version, including many statistics not mentioned below)

            There has been a steady rise in submissions over the last three years, exceeding the 700 range (when projected over 12 months) compared to the pre-electronic-era 800 range of submissions per year.  The rise is caused in part by more SH and cross-disciplinary papers.  Submissions to the journal from 1 January through 6 November 2007 are 679, up ~20% from the same period last year (567) and the previous year as well (525).

            Regarding Editor performance, the number of days between submission and first decision has been in the range of 39-44 days for Pu and Bhattacharjee and down to 26 days for Baumjohann.  The time to final decision has decreased for all three:  Baumjohann’s is in the 74-87-day range, Bhattacharjee’s in the 94-96-day range, and Pu’s in the 122-130-day range.  Their respective acceptance rates are 79% (Baumjohann), 67% (Bhattacharjee), and 82% (Pu).

 

Margaret Chen and Nicolet Ostgaard, Report on GRL

            New policies have been published in Eos (4 December 2007 issue).  Guan Le noted that there have been widespread complaints about having only three categories of response:  accepted, minor revision, rejected (but encourage to resubmit).  Margaret argued that this is not really a new policy, just a codification of what has been going on in practice.  In GEMS there used to be an option to select "major revision," but that has been removed for the sake of timeliness.

            A new feature is the invited, 6-page review paper covering a topic for the last 2-3 years.  Editors come up with topics and invite authors.

            The time from submission to first decision is about 35 days and to publication is 12-13 weeks.  The rejection rate for GRL is 58%, but this doesn't take into account the resubmission statistics.

            Finding reviewers is one of toughest jobs for an editor.  Amitava often must solicit 6-9 potential reviewers for a given paper, and Margaret has solicited as many as 12.

 

Lou Lanzerotti, Report on Space Weather

            This niche journal is still experimental and doing fine in that capacity.  E-mail and comments are positive.  Lou is much happier about process and logistics.  The journal now has a publisher, Nina Tristani, and Barbara Richmond is a new editor in charge of both Space Weather and Eos.

            There is a backlog of papers to publish.  Through monthly telecons with AGU, the publishing process has improved, but the backlog hasn't diminished yet.  There is also a backlog of news items.

            The journal’s future business model is uncertain.  NSF funding runs out at end of 2007, although an extension for next year has been requested.

            The review process is quite different from other journals.  While feature articles are almost all accepted after several iterations of drafts with the editor (and occasionally outside reviewers), technical papers are rejected at the rate of 50%:  25% are not suitable, and the other the 25% need rewriting to match Space Weather’s style before proceeding to formal review.  The journal continues to encourage more feature articles and news articles.

            AGU statistics on Space Weather are not very accurate due to the way the different categories of articles are handled in the editorial process.  The journal’s first impact factor of 1.62 is considered quite good.

            Space Weather has an editorial advisory board, and Howard Singer, who searches JGR and GRL for relevant articles for Space Weather’s Editor’s Selections, is particularly good.  Recommendations for other board members are welcome.

 

Pete Riley, Report on Reviews of Geophysics

            This journal has a high acceptance rate because most papers are solicited.  There are problems with GEMS and the responsiveness of AGU in turning around papers.  For example, when reviews are in, it can be many days before editors are notified.  Also, AGU often fails to act upon requests from editors.  There has been an overall increase of more than 20% in the number of articles published, but it’s not clear that SPA articles are contributing to that increase (data not yet seen on this).

 

Steve Cumner’s Radio Science Report, given by Nancy Crooker (click here for extensive statistics provided by Editor Tarek Habashy)

            My reading of the Editor’s data is that there has been little change in the statistics.  The number of papers published in 2007 is down, but this may be an accounting issue because a large number are pending compared to previous years.  The number of days to final decision is much shorter in 2007, which is good.

            Median time (days) from submission to final decision

            2004    173

            2005    188

            2006    192

            2007    117

            Total submitted manuscripts

            2004    175

            2005    186

            2006    151

            2007    182

 

Guan Le, Report on SPAWebsite

            Although the content of the website is kept up-to-date, the format no longer suits our needs and should be redesigned.  Might we use section funds to hire someone to do this?

 

Peter Chi, Report on SPA Newsletter

            Regarding editorial policy, the Newsletter is published roughly twice per week, although urgent messages are distributed without delay.  Announcements from the SPA officers receive top priority.  Brevity is encouraged.  With few exceptions, announcements are not repeated.

            Regarding routine practice, the Newsletter is posted on the SPA website as well as being distributed by e-mail.  The table of contents of Space Weather and a list of upcoming meetings are published monthly.  Special issues are published for AGU Fall Meeting and Spring Joint Assembly as well as other major international meetings.

            Regarding the mailing list, users can subscribe or opt off by e-mail.  The list is closely monitored and not open for use by others.  Currently it contains 2592 subscribers, up 6% from last year.  About 40% of these are from non-US internet domains.

 

Deborah Scherrer, Report on Education and Public Outreach

            The most recent accomplishment was running a GIFT workshop for 70 high school teachers in Ethiopia as part of an IHY conference.  It was a monumental undertaking, both logistically and in terms of communication.  Nevertheless it was a rewarding experience for all involved.  Funding was from NASA.  Pat Reiff’s portable planetarium was left behind as a monument to the occasion, having almost been commandeered by the customs office upon arrival at the airport.

            Nancy Crooker read some e-mail from Ines Cifuentes, AGU’s Education and Human Resources Officer, complimenting SPA’s EPO committee on being so much more active than committees from other sections.

 

Dick Wolf, Report on Union Awards and Fellows

            During the last two years, AGU has only allotted one month for deliberations of the section fellows committees.  That isn't enough time to assess 600-700 pages, given that we can't physically meet.  We could perform proper evaluations given another two weeks.

            The SPA Fellows Committee is becoming increasingly frustrated because the AGU's 0.1% per year quota means that many highly-qualified people are passed over each year.  The problem is particularly acute in SPA because of the "baby boom" of new Ph.D.s that occurred in our field in the 1970s.  There are two negative consequences:  1) Some quite distinguished careers will probably never be recognized by fellowship, and 2) only rarely are people elevated to Fellow at a sufficiently young age that the recognition might benefit their careers.  One of our committee members, Don Carpenter, suggested creation of an additional lower award (e.g., "Distinguished Member") to alleviate these problems.

 

Yan Song, Report on the Scarf Award

            The winner for 2007 is Yingjuan Ma.

            The proposed time table change has been enacted.  Previously it was possible for a student to receive the award as much as 2.5 years after receiving the Ph.D.  The new time table reduces this time interval to 1.5 years, at most.

            Only two theses were submitted this year in spite of much advertising.  It is not clear what can be done to increase submissions, although making the submission process less cumbersome (regarding color images) and shortening the nomination and judging process might help.

 

Nancy Crooker, Report on New Awards, Budget, and By-Laws

            Thanks to generous contributions from our members to the Max Hammond fund, it now exceeds $17,000, well past the goal of $15,000 set last year as the trigger for adding $10,000 from SPA funds to reach the $25,000 required to activate the fund.  An SPA selection committee will need to be set up for this student travel award.

            Sunanda and Santimay Basu are establishing an endowed fund with a generous nucleus gift of $50,000 to support the Basu International Early Career Award in Space Physics.  The award will recognize an outstanding scientist from a developing nation who is within seven years of having received a Ph.D. and who has worked under particularly difficult or adverse circumstances.  The purpose of the award, on the order of $2000, is to allow the recipient to attend the annual Fall AGU Meeting to present a paper and to interact with the larger community of scientists.  An SPA selection committee will need to be set up for this travel award, as well.

            AGU recommends a formal endorsement of the award by our committee.  Bob McPherron so moves, Deborah Scherrer seconds the motion, and it passes unanimously.  Concerns about logistics and wording of the proposal will be passed on to the AGU Honors Committee.

            Regarding the SPA budget, owing to ongoing generous contributions to our section, we may have as much as $14,000 left in our fund at the beginning of 2008.  We should not let these funds accumulate but rather spend them responsibly.  Ideas for doing so are solicited.

            Regarding the SPA by-laws, we must either adhere to them by changing how we currently conduct our business or revise them to conform to current practices, which have evolved substantially over the years.  The President and President-Elect will study the issue and get back to the committee with recommendations.

            A related agenda item we failed to address at this meeting owing to lack of time concerns whether or not executive committee members should be eligible for the Bowie Lecture.  The by-laws fail to provide any guidance on this issue and probably should as a matter of possible conflict of interest.  For now we will exclude executive committee members until such time as the deficiencies in the by-laws are addressed.