You are hereby invited to attend the2021 ILAS BUSINESS MEETINGFriday May 14, 11am EDT
ILAS-NET
Editor: Sarah Carnochan Naqvi
Address: ilasic@uregina.ca
2021 April 04 ILAS-NET Message No. 2336
CONTRIBUTED ANNOUNCEMENT FROM: Hugo J. Woerdeman
SUBJECT: 2021 ILAS Business Meeting
You are hereby invited to attend the
2021 ILAS BUSINESS MEETING
Friday May 14, 11am EDT
Virtual via zoom (details to be provided)
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: Froilan Dopico & Michael Tsatsomeros)
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 2019 Business Meeting
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Minutes of the ILAS Business meeting held on Thursday July 11, 2019, Main Auditorium, Fundação Getúlio Vargas (FGV), Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
President Semrl called the meeting to order at 6:00 pm. About 55 ILAS members were in attendance.
A. Reading of notice of meeting.
B. Reading of the minutes from the previous meeting.
Minutes of the 2017 Business Meeting held in Ames, Iowa, were approved.
C. Report of President and Vice-President
President Semrl reported on items that were new since the last President and Vice-President report that was published in the 2019 Spring issue of IMAGE.
The Board approved the proposal to hold the ILAS 2022 conference in Madrid. The organizers will present the proposal later in the meeting.
The Board approved a change to the 'Guidelines for the Hans Schneider Prize' allowing for a medal instead of a plaque.
The Board approved pursuing a Wikipedia page for ILAS. The page will contain material that does not require updating. Wayne Barrett will lead a team to provide content for the page. A volunteer from the membership will be needed to provide technical support to create and seek publication of the Wikipedia page. Those interested are encouraged to contact President Semrl.
More items were discussed at the board meeting, but those issues have not reached a conclusion yet. When they do, the membership will be informed.
D. Report of Secretary/Treasurer.
Treasurer Hogben presented the Treasurer's Report, which was published in IMAGE 62, and indicated that ILAS is in good financial state with a current balance of ~186K. It was reiterated that as a general rule ILAS is aiming to spend what comes in. In recent years support of conferences has increased.
Treasurer Hogben introduced newly appointed Assistant Secretary/Treasurer Minerva Catral. Daniel Szyld initiated a round of applause in recognition of Treasurer Hogben's dedicated service.
E. Reports of Committees.
i. Education Committee
The Education committee is composed of Avi Berman, Steve Leon, Sepideh Stewart, and David Strong (chair). As no committee member could be present at the business meeting, Chair Strong provided slides to be presented at the meeting.
The slides showed three notable activities since the 2017 ILAS Business Meeting:
Articles on Linear Algebra education in IMAGE
Sessions on "Innovative and Effective Ways to Teach Linear Algebra" at 2018 and 2019 Joint Meetings of the AMS and MAA
National Pedagogical Initiatives on Linear Algebra
The committee encourages comments and suggestions from ILAS members on furthering the teaching, learning and exploration of Linear Algebra.
ii. Institutional Membership Committee
The committee is composed of Minerva Catral, Heike Faßbender, Yongdo Lim (chair), and Peter Semrl (ex-officio). Heike Faßbender reported for the committee.
The current institutional members are: Elsevier; Pearson; World Scientific; SIAM; CRC Press; Taylor and Francis; Maplesoft, and Birkhäuser/Springer. Birkhäuser/Springer is a new addition due to the Israel Gohberg ILAS-IWOTA Lecture series, which was approved by the ILAS board in 2017.
Faßbender reported that the committee has tried to attract non-US based sponsors, but while these were happy to provide funds for ILAS conferences they were not inclined to become an Institutional Member of ILAS. While one may stay on the lookout for new Institutional Members, it may be advisable for the committee to focus on keeping the current Institutional Members well engaged. The committee expressed that help from any ILAS member in these efforts is very welcome.
iii. Journals Committee
The Journals Committee is composed of Rajendra Bhatia (chair), Geir Dahl, Froilán Dopico, Michael Tsatsomeros (ex-officio), and Louis Deaett (ex-officio). Tsatsomeros reported for the committee.
Tsatsomeros reported that Bryan Shader has expressed the desire to step down as Editor-In-Chief of ELA at the end of his term in October 2019. ILAS and the Journals Committee are considering a replacement.
Tsatsomeros continued, reporting for ELA.
iv. ELA
Editorial Board: Editors-in-Chief (Bryan Shader and Michael Tsatsomeros), 7 Advisory Editors, 16 Associate Editors, an Associate Managing Editor and an Assistant Managing Editor.
The ELA annual budget of $3500 from ILAS can be spent at the discretion of the Editor(s)-in-Chief of ELA for operational expenses related to copy editing, plagiarism checking, and maintenance of the ELA portal, as well as travel for the Editors-in-Chief and Managing Editors to attend ILAS conferences and SIAM ALA conferences. The OverLeaf platform that is currently free, may start charging fees.
Milestone ahead: ELA is approaching 1,000 papers published since 1996. Suggestions for a celebration are welcome. Richard Brualdi noted that ELA's 25th anniversary is coming up in 2021, and that one could consider a satellite meeting to SIAM-LA 2021 to celebrate this. Other disciplines have done this.
To date over 185,000 papers from over 5,800 institutions and 184 countries have been downloaded from the ELA portal. 48,000 downloads of ELA papers occurred in the last year.
ELA receives about 250 submissions per year. Each volume has about 50 papers. Tsatsomeros expresses the desire to receive more submissions from core ILAS members. About 90% of the authors he does not know.
Time from submission to publication for a regular volume is about 9-10 months. While not bad considering ELA is run by volunteers, Tsatsomeros hopes to reduce this time in the future.
Tsatsomeros discusses some metrics, comparing them to LAA, LAMA, Operators & Matrices, Special Matrices, and SIMAX. For instance, the SNIP (=normalized impact factor) 2017 for ELA is 0.886, while for the others the SNIP is 1.185, 0.951, 0.656, 0.481 and. 1.747, respectively. Other metrics show similar results. While exact interpretation of these numbers is hard, it does seem to indicate that it is fair to say that ELA is at a competitive footing among the leading linear algebra journals.
The number of total ELA citations shows an upward trend, with over 500 for 2017.
It is expected that two members of the editorial board will step down in the near future.
Currently ELA has no policy on education oriented papers. The editorial board will have to discuss this. After it was brought up, Volker Mehrmann confirmed that LAA does not publish educational oriented papers. Daniel Szyld suggested that other journals are focused on educational papers, and that ELA should continue to focus on research papers. Tsatsomeros reiterated that a discussion in the Editorial Board on this topic will be pending, and that one can also consider special issues focused on educational papers.
Volker Mehrmann asked whether the current website set-up of ELA is sustainable. Tsatsomeros answered that Shader will continue as Managing Editor, and that he is committed to continue to contribute to ELA, and that the University of Wyoming website will continue to serve as the ELA website.
Volker Mehrmann brought up that Plan S, an initiative for open-access science publishing, is emerging, and that ELA should consider collecting open access fees from those authors willing and able to pay such funds. In addition, he made the point that for some, when they pay for services, it makes the service more valuable to them. Tsatsomeros said that the Editorial Board will consider this.
Sebastian Cioaba asked about accessibility of papers to readers with disabilities, noting that accessibility of teaching materials is increasingly a concern for universities. Daniel Szyld added that in use of colors, the color blind should be taken into account. Tsatsomeros responded that this is an issue to look into, and that it may require an appropriate version of LaTeX.
v. Report on IMAGE
Editor-in-Chief, Louis Deaett. Former Editor-in-Chief, Kevin Vander Meulen, reported.
Vander Meulen started by expressing his gratitude to the members of the editorial board for their service.
Vander Meulen reported that the creation of a book of problems and solutions based on the problem section of IMAGE, is an ongoing project. Rajesh Pereira, who is in charge of the project, has talked to various publishers, and details still need to be worked out.
The number of downloads of IMAGE continue to go up, currently about 1500 per year. Mysteriously, issue 45 remains one of the most popular, perennially averaging over 1000 downloads per year. Possible explanations are welcome.
Colin Garnett began a term as editor for book reviews with IMAGE 60, replacing Doug Farenick.
Naomi Shaked-Monderer ended her tenure as editor of the history section with IMAGE 61. No replacement has currently been found. If anyone is interested, please contact Editor-in-Chief Deaett.
Minerva Catral stepped down as editor for conferences after IMAGE 59. For issues 60 and 61, Jillian McLeod served as conferences editor. She has been unable to continue serving in this capacity, and IMAGE 62 went without a dedicated member of the staff responsible for this section. Again, if anyone is interested to serve in this role, please contact Editor-in-Chief Deaett.
IMAGE is also looking to diversify geographically, and especially encourages potential contributors from a continent other than North America.
Sebastian Cioaba, who handles feature articles, asked for suggestions for future feature articles. President Semrl suggested to put out a call via ILAS-Net.
President Semrl noted that all those involved in ELA and IMAGE do hard work.
F. Transaction of other business
i) Future ILAS meetings
The 23st ILAS meeting will be held at National University of Ireland, Galway, June 22-26, 2020. Organizers Rachel Quinlan and Helena Smigoc advertised the conference website, ilas2020.ie. They encouraged suggestions that will be helpful to make the conference a success, and they announced that a call for minisymposia will go out soon. They encouraged all ILAS members to come to ILAS 2020.
The 24th ILAS meeting will be held at Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia (UNED), Madrid, Spain, June 6-10, 2022. Organizers Fernando De Terán and Roberto Canogar presented impressions of the city of Madrid, which were welcomed by the membership. Vilmar Trevisan asked about the envisioned registration fee, to which De Terán answered that they hope to be in the same ballpark as ILAS 2019.
Sebastian Cioaba expressed the concern that the ratio of female vs male plenary speakers at ILAS conferences was perhaps somewhat at the low end. President Semrl noted that in the 'Guidelines for the Organization of ILAS Meetings' diversity in various ways is a requirement for a successful conference proposal. Aside from diversity in gender, it also addresses diversity in topics, diversity of career stage, and geographical diversity. In addition, organizing committees are required to show diversity. Having said that, President Semrl continued, the ILAS Executive Board is always interested in feedback from the membership when specific concerns arise.
ii) Other business
Vice President Woerdeman, noting that this is Semrl's last ILAS business meeting as President, initiated a round of applause showing appreciation of President Semrl for his dedicated service.
G. Adjournment
President Semrl adjourned the meeting at 7:21 pm.
Respectfully submitted by Hugo Woerdeman, Vice-President of ILAS.
