Pacific Science Association: Association Affairs

Activities

PSA Attends 31st International Council for Science (ICSU) General Assembly

PSA Executive Secretary Burke Burnett attended the 31st General Assembly of the International Council for Science (ICSU) held in Auckland, New Zealand from 30 August to 3 September 2014. The meeting was hosted by the Royal Society of New Zealand, the ICSU National Scientific Member in New Zealand and also Adhering Organization from New Zealand to PSA. PSA has been a Scientific Associate member of ICSU for many decades, and Burnett attended the General Assembly as the PSA delegate.

Among the highlights of the General Assembly were the following:

• • The General Assembly endorsed open access principles and provided key recommendations guarding against the misuse of metrics in the evaluation of research performance. The five goals in the statement assert that access to the scientific record should be (1) free of financial barriers for any researcher to contribute to the record; (2) free of financial barriers for any user to access immediately on publication; (3) made available without restriction on reuse for any purpose, subject to proper attribution; (4) quality-assured and published in a timely manner; and (5) archived and made available in perpetuity.

• • The General Assembly celebrated three decades of research collaboration amongst thousands of volunteer scientists across the globe to deepen our understanding of the Earth System. ICSU delegates heard how the combined efforts of the four global change programmes (International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme [IGBP], International Human Dimensions Programme [IHDP], World Climate Research Programme, and DIVERSITAS) in the past decades were critical in shaping our understanding of the Earth System and underpinned the major science assessments, such as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). This legacy of global change research will be carried on by the new Future Earth programme, into which IGBP, IHDP, and DIVERSITAS are being merged in 2014–2015.

• • The preliminary findings of the ICSU External Review Panel (ERP) were discussed. The ERP was established in mid-2013 to review the activities and governance of ICSU.

• • Other important topics of discussion included updates to the ICSU Strategic Plan, a review of CODATA, and the Urban Health and Wellbeing in the Changing Urban Environment initiative.

• • Michael Clegg, former Foreign Secretary at the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, was elected ICSU Vice President for External Relations.

• • Professor Daya Reddy, an internationally recognized mathematician from South Africa, became the new ICSU President-Elect. He will take over from the current ICSU president, Gordon McBean, in October 2017.

The 23rd Pacific Science Congress Planning Activities:

The 23rd Pacific Science Congress (PSC-23) will be held from 13 to 17 June 2016 at the campus of Academia Sinica in Taipei, Taiwan. Planning continues to proceed smoothly. As previously reported in Association Affairs 69(1), PSA Executive Secretary Burke Burnett traveled to Taiwan in December 2014 to carry out a series of successful meetings with our colleagues at Academia Sinica, the host of the PSC-23.

Since the December 2014 meetings, the PSA Secretariat, PSA Executive Board, and PSA Committee on Scientific Affairs has been working with the Local Organizing Committee to help refine the main theme and subthemes of the PSC-23. We expect to announce the new themes and structures in Q2 or early Q3 of 2015 on the PSA website. Shortly thereafter, we intend to issue a broad call for sessions/symposia, and candidates will be identified and contacted.

A Congress website will also soon be developed and is expected in Q3 of 2015.

Announcements

Lucius G. Eldredge III Memorial Volume: Tribute to a Polymath

The Bishop Museum Press has published a memorial volume to commemorate the life and accomplishments of Dr. Lucius G. Eldredge (“Lu” to everyone), who was PSA’s Executive Secretary from 1989 to 2004. Lu was also associated with the Bishop Museum since 1965—first using its collection for his PhD work at UH Manoa, then joining PSA (whose offices are at the Museum) in 1989, and later in his role as the Museum’s invertebrate zoologist, a position he held until his passing in 2013.

During his career he had been an influential part of the lives of many scientists...