The second annual meeting of the AAPG Charles Taylor Fellowship, featuring a keynote address by AAPG award winning geoscientist Joe Macquaker, will be held Jan. 27 at the Norris Conference Center in Houston.
The gathering, which provides an opportunity for face-to-face interaction among members of the AAPG editorial board, features a reception and dinner.
The Charles Taylor Fellowship comprises current and all former members of the Association’s editorial boards.
More than 200 people have been invited to the Fellowship meeting.
The Charles Taylor Fellowship was established by the AAPG Executive Committee as a way to help ensure that the BULLETIN remains the premier scientific journal of energy geoscience. It is a “special committee” chaired by the AAPG elected editor, who is currently Michael L. Sweet.
A big goal of the night is to get all of the editors to discuss and understand the criteria and approaches used in selecting the best papers.
“Publication awards are the big thing, and this is a time to get everyone together,” Sweet said, “and the big advantage we got (last year) was a wider selection of opinion on how we choose the best paper.
“We actually sat down,” Sweet recalled of last year’s inaugural meeting, “a group that had looked at the criterion for the selection process and what makes for a best paper: Is it the science, or how the science is presented?”
That discussion concluded with a straw poll, and recommendations were presented to then-elected editor Steve Laubach.
“From that perspective, it was really useful,” Sweet said. “The way we foresee the Fellowship is to help the editor by providing input into future publications of the AAPG.”
Other priorities for the group include improving editorial board operations, identifying suitable board and reviewer performance metrics and standards, monitoring of BULLETIN performance (including time-to-decision and other efficiency measures) and updating the reviewer database.
The Fellowship also takes an active role in identifying and soliciting topics for theme issues and may recommend review articles to be commissioned.
In addition, the preliminary meeting agenda is:
- Current Overview of AAPG Publications.
- AAPG Publication Award Selection.
- Journal of Data Discussion.
- BULLETIN Manuscript Review Process.
- AAPG Wiki Demo and Discussion.
- Search and Discovery.
- Interpretation Journal.
Macquaker, now with ExxonMobil Research Co., is a former AAPG Distinguished Lecturer and co-winner (with Andrew C. Aplin) of the 2013 Wallace E. Pratt Memorial Award, presented each year to honor the authors of the best AAPG BULLETIN article.
His talk in Houston will be titled “Early Diagenesis in Fine-Grained Sediments: Cement Precipitation as a Modifier of Fabrics and Porosity Systems in Fine-Grained Rocks.”
Charles Henry Taylor was AAPG’s first editor, serving from 1917-19, and he was hailed as being a key figure in AAPG history.
His 1964 obituary called him the “father of AAPG.”
Fellowship members can attend the working sessions and dinner free of charge; a limited number of tickets to the dinner and Macquaker’s talk will be available to the public on a first-come, first-served basis.
To request tickets, or for more information on the Charles Taylor Fellowship meeting, contact Tonia Greening by email or call (918) 560-2437.