2022 May 19 ILAS-NET Message No. 2417
CONTRIBUTED ANNOUNCEMENT FROM: Froilán Dopico
SUBJECT: ILAS 2022 Business Meeting at Galway Conference
Dear ILAS Members,
You are hereby invited to attend the
2022 ILAS BUSINESS MEETING
Thursday June 23, 2022, 17:00-18:30
O'Flaherty Lecture Theatre
Campus of the National University of Ireland
Galway, Ireland
Agenda:
A. Reading of Notice of Meeting.
B. Review of the Minutes of Previous Meeting.
C. Report of President and Vice President.
D. Report of Secretary/Treasurer.
E. Reports of Committees.
i) Education Committee (chair: Sepideh Stewart)
ii) Outreach and Membership Committee (chair: David Watkins replaced in the meeting by Andrii Dmytryshyn)
iii) Journals Committee (chair: Beatrice Meini replaced in the meeting by Froilán Dopico)
iv) Electronic Journal of Linear Algebra (Editor: Froilán Dopico)
v) IMAGE (Editor: Louis Deaett)
F. Transaction of Other Business.
i) Future ILAS meetings
ii) Any other business
G. Adjournment.
Below are the minutes of the 2021 Business Meeting
2021 ILAS BUSINESS MEETING. Friday May 14, 2021. Virtual via Zoom
Agenda:
A. Reading of Notice of Meeting.
B. Review of the Minutes of Previous Meeting.
C. Report of President and Vice President.
D. Report of Secretary/Treasurer.
E. Reports of Committees.
i) Education Committee (chair: Sepideh Stewart)
ii) Outreach and Membership Committee (chair: David Watkins)
iii) Journal Committee (chair: Beatrice Meini)
iv) Electronic Journal of Linear Algebra (Editors: Froilán Dopico & Michael Tsatsomeros)
v) IMAGE (Editor: Louis Deaett)
F. Transaction of Other Business.
i) Future ILAS meetings
ii) Any other business
G. Adjournment.
President Szyld called the meeting to order at 11:01 am EDT. President Szyld observed that we met the quorum, as stated in the revised bylaws. These revisions were prepared by a committee with members Leslie Hogben, Peter Šemrl, and Hugo Woerdeman. The attendance during the meeting ranged between 51 to 56 ILAS members.
A. Reading of notice of meeting.
B. Review of the minutes from the previous meeting.
Minutes of the 2019 Business Meeting held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, were approved.
C. Report of President and Vice-President
President Szyld started by thanking (i) Former President Peter Šemrl for leaving ILAS in wonderful shape and keeping him on track; (ii) Vice President Hugo Woerdeman for being a fantastic partner; and (iii) Former Secretary/Treasurer Leslie Hogben for providing a steady hand, a well of knowledge, and a source of sage advice.
Next, President Szyld highlighted the Wikipedia page and the newly designed webpages. He pointed out that the new webpages were the results of a big effort with Dominique Guillot providing instrumental help with the overall design and implementation, with Vice-President Hugo Woerdeman masterminding the effort, and with continued strong support by ILAS-NET and ILAS Website Manager Sarah Carnochan Naqvi. Dominique Guillot and Pietro Paparella joined the ILAS-NET/Website team as Assistant Managers.
President Szyld also highlighted the newly introduced Facebook and Twitter pages, which Outreach and Membership Director David Watkins would discuss later on.
President Szyld announced that the board approved a new prize, the ILAS Richard A. Brualdi Early Career Prize, which will be awarded to someone within 7 years of their PhD. For the first installment it will be someone who received their PhD between 2015 and 2022, and he encouraged members to start thinking about possible nominations. In addition, the Board approved the proposal to change the Taussky-Todd Lecture to the ILAS Taussky-Todd Prize. Together with the ILAS Richard A. Brualdi Early Career Prize and the Hans Schneider Prize, ILAS now has a triplet of prizes.
President Szyld continued to discuss the upcoming conferences, with the ILAS 23/SIAM-LA21 meeting next week, the ILAS 24 Galway meeting in June 2022, and the ILAS 25 Madrid meeting in June 2023. For 2025 Szyld and Vice-President for Conferences Raf Vandebril are starting to consider options, and the membership is welcome to put forward ideas and proposals.
Next, President Szyld mentioned that ILAS is now a partner at the Joint Mathematics Meetings (JMM). For JMM 2022 the board chose Pauline van den Driessche as the first ILAS Lecturer at the JMM, and in addition there will be ILAS Special Sessions. In response to Kevin vander Meulen’s question what the financial commitment is, President Szyld answered that ILAS will contribute $1000 to the meeting as well as cover the expenses of the ILAS Lecturer.
D. Report of Secretary/Treasurer.
Former Secretary/Treasurer Hogben mentioned that this will be a shared presentation with Secretary/Treasurer Catral as the transition to the new Secretary/Treasurer was very recent. Hogben continued to present the Treasurer’s Report, which will be published in IMAGE 66, and indicated that ILAS is in good financial state that grew in the last year from about $200K to the current balance of about $210K. It was reiterated that as a general rule ILAS is aiming to spend what comes in, as a non-profit organization should. This past year, however, the expenses were close to zero as conferences were cancelled or went virtual. A new expense is the copy-editing of ELA.
Secretary/Treasurer Catral continued and mentioned that:
- ELA started to use a private company Lumina to do the copy-editing.
- The payment options for members now include PayPal and credit card payments via PayPal.
- Processing new members takes time and is typically done once a month. Thus it takes some time before new members show up on the webpages. Secretary/Treasurer Catral asks the membership to keep this in mind, and to please be patient.
Secretary/Treasurer Catral expressed appreciation for donations that were received, and mentioned that the ILAS Richard A. Brualdi Early Career Prize Fund is a new addition to the list of funds.
E. Reports of Committees.
i. Education Committee
The Education Committee is composed of Anthony Cronin, Judith McDonald, Rachel Quinlan, Sepideh Stewart (chair), and David Strong.
Chair Stewart reported for the committee mentioning that (i) The new Education Committee was appointed in February 2021 and that they had monthly committee meetings since as well as other discussions. (ii) Anthony Cronin is now the editor in charge of the education portion of the IMAGE bulletin. (iii) They are in the process of designing education pages for ILAS website, which will be forwarded to the Board.
(iv) Weekly seminars are being planned starting Fall 2021. (v) The committee is involved in organizing workshops, including a Mini-Symposium at ILAS 23/SIAM-LA21 (“Linear Algebra Education for the Modern World”) and a Mini-Symposium at ILAS 2022 (Anthony Cronin and Sepideh Stewart are co-organizers of this session, and currently, 12 speakers are invited to present at the conference).
The committee is excited and dedicated to focus on ILAS and its goals and find ways of serving the ILAS community. The committee encourages comments and suggestions from ILAS.
ii. Outreach and Membership Committee
The committee is composed of Minerva Catral, Andrii Dmytryshyn, Federico Poloni, and David Watkins (chair).
Outreach Director Watkins reported for the committee, and mentioned that (i) in Summer 2020 the committee started a membership drive, sending out nearly 1000 letters to Linear Algebraists who are not current members of ILAS, inviting them to join. The ILAS-Net mailing list was a good resource for identifying potential members. Former Secretary/Treasurer Hogben observed that the membership drive led to several new members. The committee is currently collecting names of potential new members by, for instance, going through Linear Algebra journals. Outreach Director Watkins encouraged ILAS members to inform the committee of potential new members the committee could contact.
Watkins continued reporting that the committee started a Facebook page and a Twitter account, and he encourages ILAS members to be a follower via Facebook and Twitter, and contribute posts and send retweets with comments. In addition, he hopes that after Galway there will be new pictures to post.
The committee is also in the process of extending our presence on Wikipedia, and collaborate with Beatrice Meini, chair of the Journals Committee, to make an ELA page on Wikipedia. It was mentioned that Linear Algebra and its Applications has a Wikipedia page.
Finally, the committee is always looking for new corporate sponsors, and hopes to score the MathWorks as a new sponsor. The ILAS members are encouraged to let the committee know of potential sponsors.
Vice-President Woerdeman mentioned that he noticed that a Wikipedia page on the Hans Schneider Prize predated the ILAS Wikipedia page, and wondered if anyone knew who initiated this. Federico Poloni noticed that the initiator wrote several other Wikipedia pages on prizes in Mathematics.
iii. Journals Committee
The Journals Committee is composed of Louis Deaett (for IMAGE), Froilán Dopico (for ELA), Chi-Kwong Li, Beatrice Meini (chair), and Peter Šemrl.
Chair Meini reported for the committee, starting off with mentioning that the ILAS bulletin IMAGE has interesting articles on activities, interviews, reports, and other items, and that it is doing well. At the moment no new actions are planned regarding IMAGE.
Chair Meini continued, discussing the Electronic Journal of Linear Algebra (ELA) - the ILAS research journal, and our flagship publication. It is fully open access (no charges for authors/readers). The goal is to make the journal more attractive for authors and to continue to raise the quality of the journal.
The actions that are planned are: (i) advertise the journal, for instance, by creating a Wikipedia page for the journal. (ii) to improve the editorial process (e.g., faster publication times – professional copy-editing supported by ILAS and voluntary donations). In addition, the following actions were taken regarding the editorial board, allowing for a continuous change in editors as well as bringing in younger researchers to the editorial process:
- The President shall appoint at the direction of the Board of Directors and after consultation with the Journal Committee not more than 2 Editors-in-Chiefs (EiCs) for 3-year terms. The EiCs may not serve more than 2 consecutive terms.
- The EiCs shall appoint Advisory Editors for 3-year terms after consultation with the Journal Committee. The Advisory Editors should normally not serve for more than 3 terms. Appointments, renewals, as well as exceptions to the term limit rule, must be approved by the Journal Committee.
- The EiCs shall appoint Associate Editors for 3-year terms after consultation with the Journal Committee. The Associate Editors should normally not serve for more than 2 terms. Appointments, renewals, as well as exceptions to the term limit rule, must be approved by the Journal Committee.
- Once a year, the EiCs shall present a report to the Board of Directors (to be discussed with the Journal Committee) on the operation of the journal since the last such report.
Chair Meini encouraged all ILAS members to submit their papers to ELA, and added that the journal has great editors.
ILAS member Nair Abreu noted that in Brazil open access journals are perceived as having low quality. President Szyld responded that those journals that have page charges are perceived in that way, but that ELA does not have page charges.
iv. ELA
Editor-in-Chief Michael Tsatsomeros reported for ELA. He started out by saying that since the beginning of 2020 ELA has moved online editorial platforms from BePress to Open Journal Systems (OJS). It required a significant effort from all members of the Editorial Board in order to transfer records and adapt to the new environment. Tsatsomeros thanks everyone for their efforts.
Next, he wants to express that ELA must prioritize and strive toward the following goals:
- Seek greater quality of papers and journal reputation as measured by citations, journal metrics and ranking. Currently, the manuscripts received vary widely in quality as well as in classification. Increasingly, received manuscripts do not fit well in the journal.
- Steer ELA to better reflect and influence the research trends in linear algebra and its applications.
- Attract greater participation in the content of ELA by ILAS members.
Tsatsomeros expressed that the Editors-in-Chief along with the editors aim to be more selective, focusing on modern research and try to improve citations. It continues to be important to receive good papers, which will increase the quality, resulting in more good papers, etc. Tsatsomeros appealed to the membership to trust the direction of ELA and to submit strong papers. He acknowledged that compared to LAA, LAMA and SIMAX, the Electronic Journal of Linear Algebra does have some disadvantage as it does not have the recognition of a well-known publisher behind it. In addition, Tsatsomeros mentioned the pursuit of the CNKI (Chinese scholar indexing), which may help to increase ELA’s exposure in the Chinese research community.
Tsatsomeros’s term limit as EIC will end in February 2022, but he will stay available to continue to help with ELA’s development, and asks the ILAS membership for help in supporting ELA.
President Szyld asked what the percentage of papers is that is rejected outright. In 2020 there were 138 out of 219 papers that were rejected outright, which represents a percentage of 63%. The overall rejection rate is about 70%. Vice-President Woerdeman offered that having made ELA more prominent on the new webpages will hopefully also help ELA.
Tsatsomeros finished by thanking all the editors for their service. President Szyld reiterated this sentiment and also thanked Editors-in-Chief Froilán Dopico and Michael Tsatsomeros for all their hard work.
v. There was no separate report on IMAGE.
F. Transaction of other business
i) Future ILAS meetings
Vice-President for Conferences Vandebril started out by mentioning that the Galway meeting was postponed from 2020 to 2022, and that the Madrid meeting was moved from 2022 to 2023. He thanked the organizers for handling these changes. He continued, mentioning that next week the combined ILAS 23/SIAM-LA21 will take place, and that (i) out of the 88 minisymposia, 11 are designated as ILAS ones; (ii) out of the 72 contributed talks, 8 are designated as ILAS ones; (iii) out of the 14 plenary talks, 4 are designated as ILAS ones. In addition, many participants are identified as ILAS participants. At the time of this writing, it was additionally reported that out of the 324 minisymposia talks, 47 were designated as ILAS.
Next, he introduced Rachel Quinlan, organizer of the 24th ILAS meeting, which will be held at National University of Ireland, Galway, June 20-24, 2022. Quinlan expressed gratitude to many of the main speakers who were flexible in moving their talk to 2022. There will be some changes, though, especially regarding the special lectures as some will happen at ILAS 23/SIAM-LA21. Many minisymposia will also be moved from 2020 to 2022, and there will be a call for contributed minisymposia. She also mentioned some favorable features of the town and the conference site, and encourages ILAS members to check the conference website, ilas2020.ie, where also pandemic related and/or potential virtual component announcements will appear. She expressed the hope to see many in person in Galway. Board member Sebastian Cioabă and ILAS member Nair Abreu subsequently expressed similar sentiments.
To discuss the 25th ILAS meeting Organizer Fernando De Terán was given the floor. ILAS 25 will be held at Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia (UNED), Madrid, Spain, June 5-9, 2023, a time when the temperatures are typically still pleasant. The location is on the west side of the side of the city, easily accessible from the center of Madrid by public transportation. Support from local government has been promised including a special venue for the banquet and/or the reception: Cecilio Rodríguez Pavillion (Retiro Garden). Next, the local and scientific organizing committees were introduced. They will be working on the webpage, the selection of plenary speakers, and the invited minisymposia.
G. Adjournment
After wishing everybody a good conference the following week, President Szyld adjourned the meeting at 12:07 pm EDT.
Respectfully submitted by Hugo Woerdeman, Vice-President of ILAS.
