Annual Report 2007: FY July 1, 2006-June 30, 2007
Publications Committee
The mission of the Publications Committee is to assist the Association’s Elected Editor by soliciting important topics for publication and assessing suitability, market appeal, and timeliness of proposals for AAPG’s special publications and the Bulletin.
The AAPG Publications Committee, ably supported by the AAPG Geosciences Department, has continued to solicit, review, and process proposals for publications as AAPG Special Publication volumes. Reviewers (committee members) have contributed to revisions of proposals that have strengthened the final texts and made sure the volumes are related to hydrocarbon geology that is relevant to the AAPG membership.
The chair, vice-chairs, and staff have maintained a schedule of monthly teleconference calls to assess the progress of each project, and helped shepherd various authors along the paths towards completion of projects.
One of the initiatives that has finally bloomed during this year is the “Getting Started In...” series. Each unit in this series consists of a collection of 10-15 seminal and important published papers that have been collected by an expert in the field, with introductory text for the volume and a brief synopsis of each paper. The series is aimed at the geologist who wants to ramp up quickly in topics such as fluvial sedimentology or salt tectonics, and geologists who have recently started work in a newly assigned task area. The series also makes a good resource for academic geology classes. Six such volumes are now in print; they are selling well and more are in the works.
One of the changes made in the Special Publications process is the formulation of a Special Publications “Application.” This series of questions for a prospective author/editor serves several purposes. First, it informs the author/editor of the size of the undertaking and of the different steps involved, serving as a reality check. Second, it provides data such as expected number of pages, number of figures, and amount of color, with which AAPG HQ staff can do cost analyses.
The AAPG Publications Committee is always looking for good geology texts to publish, either in hardcopy, digital, or hybrid hardcopy-digital formats.
We have streamlined the process and improved the turn-around time between submission and print. In fact we are currently anxious to receive projects in order to replenish the pipeline as projects are completed.
Sixteen digital publications were released during the 2006–2007 year, and the following titles were released in hardcopy:
- Memoir 84 – The Carpathians and their Foreland: Geology and Hydrocarbon Resources
- Memoir 87 – Sand Injectites: Implications for Hydrocarbon Exploration and Production
- Memoir 88 – Giant Hydrocarbon Reservoirs of the World
- Studies 55 – Oil and Gas of the Greater Caspian Area
- Computer Applications 5 – Stochastic Modeling and Geostatistics: Principles, Methods, and Case Studies, Volume II
In addition, approximately 30 projects are currently in various stages of being turned from an author/editor’s wild idea into a volume that will be sold by AAPG. These projects include themes such as an interactive, electronic petroleum-geology textbook, an atlas of outcrops of deep-water deposits, a volume on carbon dioxide sequestration, and an exposition on the Hugoton Field in Kansas.
John Lorenz, Chair
Committee members: Donna S. Anderson, Stacy C. Atchley, Paul Anthony Catacosinos, Edward Blackshear Coalson, Scott Patrick Cooper, William D. DeMis, Ashton Fox Embry III, Dengliang Gao, Donald Lee Gautier, Gretchen M. Gillis, Steven Maurice Goolsby, Carolyn Ann Green, James W. Handschy, Robert C. Hulse, Andrew Hurst, John Clay Lorenz (chair), Astrid Makowitz, Vernon Michael Moore, Terrilyn M. Olson, Jack C. Pashin, Douglas Cameron Peters, Francois M. Roure, Raymond Paul Sorenson, 1758 Annual Report Russell E. Stands-Over-Bull, Denise M. Stone, Laird B. Thompson, Qingming Yang, and Scott S. Young.