SUPPLEMENT TO METEORITICS & PLANETARY SCIENCE, VOL. 41 no. xx The Meteoritical Society Newsletter (November 2006) A report of the business carried out by the Society over the past year, edited by Jeff Grossman, Secretary. EDITORIAL From the President Herbert Palme Society has approved the agreement and it will become effective in The end of my second year as president of the Meteoritical late 2006. You can read about all of the benefits of the new Society is approaching. In January, 2007, Joe Goldstein will take arrangement in the Membership section below. over. During these two years the Society has gone through a period of transitions in several respects. A major change is the restructuring Financial situation and consolidation of the financial situation of the Society: (a) Thanks All of the Society's funds have now been transferred to A.G. to Jeff Grossman's activities, the MSA (Mineralogical Society of Edwards in Tucson, i.e., all our money is now with a single America) will take over the membership administration. (b) Joe company. This summer, I appointed an ad hoc financial committee Goldstein, as chair of the Investments Committee, concentrated all (chaired by Joe Goldstein, with members Huss, Rubin, and assets of the Society in a single place and a newly established McKeegan). Their report suggests establishing an annual financial committee headed by Joe has proposed to Council a new set independent audit of our society finances each fiscal year, changing of financial policies and procedures. the fiscal year, and setting up formal budgeting and reporting guidelines. Their full proposal will be presented to Council in the Annual Meetings Houston March meeting. All these actions will help to consolidate This year's Annual Meeting was held in Zürich in early August. It the financial situation of the Society. was one of the largest meetings, with 216 oral presentations and 150 We have to realize that most of our dues go into MAPS. The posters. The facilities at the ETH were excellent and everybody Society is supporting MAPS with about $100,000 per year, which enjoyed the city and the lake with a boat trip on Wednesday and the accounts for some 25% of the operating costs of the journal. Annual Banquet at a lake front restaurant on Thursday evening. Nevertheless, the Society is financially in good shape because we are Rainer Wieler and his team did an outstanding job. Apparently the receiving royalties from GCA, presently at a rate of $55,000 per year weather has helped them. Statistics by Rainer show that "Impact (a certain fraction of the net gain Elsevier makes with GCA). The Processes and Structures" dominated the meeting with 35 future of the GCA royalties are unknown and the Society will have to contributions (talks + posters), followed by "Differentiated talk to Elsevier about this. In view of this, and also in our own Meteorites" (31), and "Carbonaceous Chondrites" (26). For me, the interest, we should all try to help MAPS reduce their costs and most exciting progress is currently occurring with the improvement increase income by obtaining more library subscriptions. We also of the time scale of early solar system evolution. New and better decided at the Council Meeting in Zürich that new members joining isotope analyses allow us to refine the sequence of events with in the middle of the year will not receive back issues of MAPS, but unprecedented accuracy. Also, the first exciting reports of Stardust will have electronic access to those issues. Also, the value of a analyses were presented. We will certainly hear more about this in journal such as MAPS increases with an increasing number of future meetings. citations. We should therefore send high quality papers to MAPS. The next meeting will be held in Tucson from August 13 to 17, 2007. This is one week before the Goldschmidt Conference in Desert Meteorite Workshop Cologne (August 19-24). I recommend that you go to both meetings. This year, the Meteoritical Society sponsored a desert meteorite workshop in Morocco, one of the countries with a huge reservoir of Awards meteorites. The Casablanca workshop was organized by Hasnaa At the award ceremony in Zürich on Wednesday morning, I had Chennaoui from the Hassan II Casablanca University. It attracted the privilege to present the Leonard medal to Michael J. Gaffey and people from 13 countries, including representatives from Algeria, the Nier prize to Matthieu Gounelle. The Barringer awardee, Robert Tunisia and Oman. The large number of meteorites from these M. Schmidt, was not present. I was particularly pleased to present the countries poses increasing problems for the Nomenclature first Service Award to Jörn Koblitz. His enormous compilation of Committee. The situation with regard to collecting meteorites is meteoritic data in MetBase is an indispensable tool to many different in each of these countries. There are presently no laws in researchers. I have known Jörn for many years. As an amateur, he has Morocco that restrict meteorite collection and export. Other countries a broad knowledge of meteoritics and a genuine interest in all aspects like Algeria and Oman have strict rules, which do not allow the of meteorite research. He was a member of the Nomenclature export of meteorites without permission from the government. Committee from 1997 to 2003 and is thus one of the few amateurs Recently the government of Oman has asked the Meteoritical who ever served on Meteoritical Society committees. Society not to give names to meteorites from Oman nor to publish Congratulations again to all the winners. papers on them, unless they are accompanied by valid export papers. The Society is presently formulating an answer. All aspects of this New Membership Administration have to be carefully considered, as other countries may follow with In the past few years, many members of the Society have had similar requests. I assume that within a few years, collecting desert problems with paying dues, obtaining information about their meteorites will be more or less under the control of the countries membership status, and getting answers to questions about renewals. where the meteorites are found. I welcome this development, as I I hope that with MSA taking over membership administration these think it is the right of these countries to protect their natural treasures problems will disappear. I do apologize for problems you may have and prevent illegal export of meteorites. It is my opinion that the encountered during the past years and I very much hope that the Meteoritical Society should support these efforts. But how this can number of members will increase again. best be done and what role the Nomenclature Committee should play The details of our contract with MSA are fixed in a letter of in this process are presently being discussed among officers and agreement between the two societies. The Council of the Meteoritical councilors of the Society. I see in the future a great potential for 1 further activities in this area, for example, in helping these countries As I retire as President at the end of 2006, a number people will to train young people in the basics of meteoritics, in providing them also rotate off the Council. On behalf of the Meteoritical Society, I with display units for museums, in helping to properly organize their would like to thank retiring Councilors Addi Bischoff, Guy collections etc. Consolmagno, Trevor Ireland, and Mike Zolensky, retiring Treasurer Kevin McKeegan, and especially Past President Gary Huss for their Council and committees dedicated service to the Society. METEORITICS & PLANETARY SCIENCE Editor’s Report A. J. Timothy Jull 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 (est) US institutional 149 140 147 139 139 I would like to summarize briefly the status of our journal, Overseas 62 55 62 57 56 Meteoritics and Planetary Science. The journal is doing well, and No cost 12 12 7 6 6 we are printing more quality papers than ever. For this year, we Mandated 3 3 3 3 2 should set a record for the number of pages printed and number of Total 226 210 219 205 203 papers. Note: about 48 overseas institutions subscribe through US agents. Here is a summary of number of papers printed since 2003: There are two mandated subscriptions (to the Library of Year Number of papers Pages printed Pages/paper Congress and Chemical Abstracts). We no longer provide a print 2006 115† 1936 16.8 copy to ADS (Harvard) as they are provided with electronic files. 2005 117 2187 18.7 Delays in printing have been eliminated. We are concerned 2004 136 2352 17.3 about the build-up in the number of submissions, which may lead to 2003 127 2123 16.7 some publication delay in future. We have some reports of mail- †10 issues plus supplement related delays in specific locations (mostly Germany), we are working to eliminate these problems with our mail forwarding The budget for the journal in 2006 compared to previous years is service. fairly stable. The cost/page remains relatively static at $140- We anticipate a budget of about $371,000 for 2007. The budget 150/page. A plot of price/page against time shows that the printing increases every year, but appears to be under control for the next costs basically track U. S. inflation of 3-4% per year and are slightly several years. I note that: lower than in prior years. We estimate that 2006 costs will be similar a) We have introduced the page charge discussed at the to 2005, but we hope to constrain the charges for running over the Council meeting in Houston. We do not yet have any good contracted print limit.