2007 Final Business Meeting, San Diego, California
Minutes of the Section D Final Business Meeting, December 2007.
Summary: Section D was well represented at the2007 ESA Annual Meeting, with several symposia, 10-minute papers and posters. Participation was high in the student competition, with 20 oral presentations and 10 student posters delivered. The numbers of posters was a large increase from 2006. Due to the reorganization of the ESA, there was no preliminary business meeting for Section D and this meeting represented the final meeting for the Section. The leadership for the new ESA Section: Structural, Veterinary and Public Health Systems were introduced. The opportunities afforded to members and the Section under the reorganized ESA were presented. Several changes to the society’s journals were discussed including the incorporation of review articles. Section D had about 680 members, while the new Section will have about 1,700 members. ESA intends to launch new web-based software that will greatly enhance member communication through Sections and Networks.
Full report:
Minutes of the Final Section D Business Meeting.
December 10, 2007, Garden Salon 1, Town and Country Resort and Convention Center, San Diego, California.
Section D Chair, Sandy Allan, called the final 2007 Section D business meeting to order at 5:40 PM.
Sandy Allan noted that because this was the final business meeting of Section D and that ESA was reorganizing at the end of this session, that only old business would be discussed.
The 2006 preliminary and final business meeting minutes were made available to the members of Section D. Laura Harrington (Section D past-secretary) reviewed the notes from 2006. Key items highlighted were the Renewal process and the new members. Roger Moon moved to approve the minutes and Tim Lysyk seconded the motion. All members in attendance approved the minutes.
Sandy Allan announced that two committee openings that were available had been filled. These included the Education and Outreach committee, which will be filled by Elizabeth Brown and the Arthropod Management Tests Editorial Board representative, which was filled by Jim Cilek. Each of these appointments is a 3-year term.
Nearly 2,700 attendees were at the meeting with 2,014 presentations, including 1,332 posters. There were 5 Program Symposia, 21 Section Symposia, one late breaking symposium and 109 paper sessions. The meeting will be in San Diego in 2010 and will be held again at the Town and Country Resort and Convention Center.
Sandy Allan introduced the officers for the Renewed ESA Structural, Veterinary and Public Health Systems section (SVPH). These will be Jan Conn (President), Phil Kaufman (Vice President), Mike Merchant (Vice President-elect), Ted Granowsky (Treasurer), Tim Lysyk (Governing Board representative). The President and Vice President will serve as representatives on the Programming Committee, the Vice President-elect will serve as secretary. The Treasurer position is a 3-year appointment. These five officers will serve as the Section Governing Council.
The new section will receive approximately $13,000 from ESA-central in 2008 for programmatic support. The annual amount is determined by the size of the section’s membership and the attendance at the annual meeting. The section Treasurer will process all requests, but the money is held at ESA-central. For 2008, the budget is listed as miscellaneous, however, future budgets will be determined by the Governing Council and allocated to expenditure categories prior to disbursement with approval by the Governing Board. When dollars are not expended in a given year, that money will be rolled over to the following year, however, the Governing Board prefers that the money be used as intended. Additional dollars can be generated by external sources, including contributions. These dollars cannot be used in ways that conflict with ESA-central. These dollars are intended to provide resources for workshops, development of white papers, and whatever else the section decides is appropriate. Carl Jones stated that the dollars are not intended for programmatic events at the annual meeting. There are other resources available for these needs.
Sandy Allan encouraged the members to read the constitution and by-laws. They are much simpler than the previous version and allow for flexibility.
Old Business:
Roger Moon asked if all Section F was merging with Section D. Carl Jones pointed out that it was an individual’s own decision. Tim Lysyk stated that Section D had about 680 members while the new SVPH section has around 1,700 members, mostly from Section’s Fb and E.
Section D Program Summary
Dan Kline provided the Highlights of Medical Entomology and Tanja McKay delivered the Highlights of Veterinary Entomology. Two additional presentations were provided at the end of the Symposia, one delivered by Assaf Anyamba on Rift Valley Fever and a second by Feliz Guerrero on Rhipicephalus microplus..
Sandy Allan thanked the moderators and student competition judges. There were two Section D student presentations sessions, 11 presentations in session 1 and 9 in the second session, which was a combined grouping containing both Section D/E students. There were 10 Section D student posters.
Editorial Boards.
Governing Board – Carl Jones reported that page charges to the four ESA journals for 2009 would drop by 25%. He also reported that ESA-central has approximately $5 million and is financially very healthy. This value is about twice the annual expenditures for the society and will facilitate the society taking on new projects. The society hopes to create new awards for undergraduates and has recently developed an Early Career Innovation award. ESA has developed a one million dollar endowment to enhance attendance at the annual meeting. He also stated that students should be encouraged to fill out the form that guarantees them at a minimum a $25 check from ESA. The society is considering new publications and that a publisher will probably serve as the underwriter to the venture. Nancy Hinkle asked if the one million dollar endowment is part of the 5 million dollar reserves. Carl Jones affirmed that it was.
Publications Council – The Publications Council met on December 11, 2007 and excerpts from a report submitted by Jerry Hogsette follows. All ESA journals and other publications are in good shape. Metrics proposed for journals in 2005 were modified slightly and two new metrics were added: Number of review articles submitted and number of review articles published. Journals will be asked to solicit for and publish at least one Review article per year to increase the impact factor of the journal. The double published manuscript sanctions were discussed and suggestions from the floor ranged from minor hand slaps to more harsh actions. Authors who double publish will be prevented from publishing in ESA publications for a yet-to-be decided number of years plus a notice about their actions will be published in the pertinent journal and the on-line version of their paper will be water-marked with verbiage to indicate that it has been published twice. Review of manuscripts published only on-line was discussed at length.
Journal of Medical Entomology – Through a submitted report, Wes Watson stated that the time to notify authors averaged 57.2 days and time to acceptance was 119.6 days. Time to publication averaged 6-9 months overall and about 3 months from acceptance. There were 289 submission received as of 11/30/2007. The acceptance rate was 45%. A higher rate of submission and limited number of subject editors has allowed the Journal to be more selective and editors have been encouraged to demand higher quality manuscripts. This has resulted in a higher rejection rate in 2007. More manuscripts are being rejected without review (ca. 10% of submitted manuscripts) in order to reduce the burden on the subject editors and the review process. The majority of the manuscripts rejected without review are rejected for “not appropriate for journal” or “not an addition to the literature.” The impact factor of the Journal is moving up and JME has the shortest turnaround time of all of the ESA journals. There were 1,178 pages published within 158 articles. There were $962.00 in editorial page charge waivers granted in 2007. The contract with Cadmus Professional Communications was extended through 2010. Discussion from the Governing Board included eliminating page charges for ESA members and increasing costs for institutional subscriptions, improvement of the impact factor by including at least one review article per year with the first in 2009. A discussion on how best to improve the Journal’s impact factor occurred with several suggestions offered.
Annals of the ESA – No report provided.
Environmental Entomology – Mark Blackmore stated that the committee met on Saturday and discussed raising the impact factor of the journal. There were 511 submissions and a 50-60% acceptance rate. They debated incorporating review articles and the frequency of such articles. A discussion on developing an ethics policy in response to the retraction of an already published article occurred. One article that had been rejected was appealed. The decision will probably be in support of the editor’s decision. They discussed metrics and goals. The digitization of past articles is underway and is expected to be completed by 2009 with free availability to members. Revenue streams were discussed without decision. Carl Jones added that all ESA journals are expected to incorporate review articles, at least one per volume with a microbial issue as a jumpstart. In response to a question by Glen Scoles, Tim Lysyk announced that a donor of all issues of the Journal of Medical Entomology had been found and that this journal would be digitized in entirety, including pre-ESA ownership. Mark Blackmore will rotate off the board in 2009.
Journal of Economic Entomology – Alec Gerry reported that JEE is doing well with about 500 submissions and an acceptance rate of <60%. They continue to lose subscriptions that are probably institutional. The association with BioOne has raised revenues. The journal is attempting to clear old inventory by having authors complete rewrites that are in the system. JEE also issued a retraction in October in response to a double publication. They discussed the penalty to the author with a range from a 5-year to a lifetime ban. The publications council decision decided that a retraction was best at this point. JEE is considering the use of pre-publication issues. On an appeal, the publications council agreed with the JEE editors rejection of a publication.
Arthropod Management Tests – Jim Cilek stated that 280 reports were published in AMT, a decrease of 35 from 2006. The Editor-in-Chief, David Kerns, resigned in March of 2007 and Alan Kahn, ESA Director of Communications, filled in and finished production of the current volume, which was published in September. Anyone interested in this position should contact Alan as soon as possible. Several AMT Editorial Board members stated that their institutions were placing more and more emphasis on generating peer-reviewed publications, while at the same time, de-emphasizing non-peer reviewed works (of which AMT is the latter). In an attempt to better determine why submissions to AMT are declining, an online survey will be conducted of current and past authors.
Committee Reports
Education and Youth - No report provided.
Ethics - No report provided.
Fellows – No report provided.
Founder’s Memorial Award - No report provided.
Membership – There were 6,065 members as of December 11, 2007. This is up from 5,817 in 2006 and is the highest since 2001 when there were 6,160 members. The committee discussed the various charges delivered by the President. A discussion on multi or lifetime memberships occurred with a caution against lifetime memberships. There is a new membership assistant at headquarters who will assist with membership issues. There will be a change in membership categories. The Student Transition II category will be eliminated and a Young Professional category will be instituted. The Finance Committee recommends a Presidents Circle membership. As described, the cost to an enrolling member would be twice the annual dues with the idea that this will support the membership of another, perhaps an international member. The member enrolling at the President’s Circle membership category will tell ESA what to do with the money. This membership is not tax deductible.
Announcements
It was announced that the new ESA Section: Structural, Veterinary and Public Health Systems would have an informational meeting at 1:30 PM on December 12, 2007.
The 2009 Society for Vector Ecology meeting will be held in Turkey from October 17-23, 2009. Information can be found at the SOVE.ORG website.
Symposia deadlines have been moved up 3 weeks due to the earlier (November) meeting. There are 3 types of symposia, Program, Section and Member. There will be 6 program symposia. The advantages of the Program Symposia include more funding, earlier occurrence in the program, and a better time slot. These symposia must provide a link to the meeting theme, which is “Metamorphosis: A New Beginning”. Submissions must be made by February 01, 2008. Section symposia must be received by March 06, 2008. Each section is provided 3 symposia. All symposia not chosen for either Program or Section categories will enter an open competition for Member Symposia status. These symposia are also due by March 06, 2008. There will be 30 symposia offered at the 2008 meeting, the same number as in 2007. Roger Moon commented that traditionally, Section D has used one of its Section Symposia slots for the two “Highlights” presentations. Tim Lysyk added that since the new SVPHS section (name changed to MUVE, December 2009) includes many members from the Structural community, we should consider including a “Highlights” for this area. Chris Geden commented that the “Highlights” can take many forms and we should consider how to handle this in the future.
Jack Peterson announced that the International Congress of Entomology meeting would be held from July 6-12, 2008 in South Africa. He and Mustapha Debboun have submitted a travel grant to NSF to support student attendance at the meeting.
Phil Kaufman announced that the ESA intends to launch improved web-based software in January 2008 that will facilitate communication between members within Sections and Networks.
Jan Conn moved to adjourn the meeting and Roger Moon seconded the motion.
Respectfully submitted by Phillip E. Kaufman