Change is underway in Preview land.
The ASEG Federal Executive, supported by the ASEG Publications Committee, has decided to resume responsibility for production of Preview. The ASEG will be entirely responsible for the content and design of the magazine from January 2024. The design of the magazine has, for the past five years, been constrained by the rather rigid formatting requirements of a production system set up for journals by Taylor and Francis (T&F). A change to self-production will eventually allow us to move to a more dynamic layout and offer more interesting possibilities to advertisers. A digital version of the magazine will continue to be published on the ASEG website and, at this stage, T&F will continue to allocate DOIs to individual articles and publish them on their website. This is primarily so that institutional sales that currently pair Preview and Exploration geophysics can be honoured. Hard copies of the magazine will now be printed and distributed by the ASEG within Australia. This change should result in a significant improvement in delivery times for all Australian subscribers.
It is the ASEG’s hopeful expectation that most of the cost of production, including print and distribution, will eventually be covered by income from advertisers. Many of you will be aware that our advertising base fell away when we moved from CSIRO Publishing to Taylor and Francis. We think that this was partly because the T&F advertising team, which is based in the United States of America, did not have a good understanding of our industry, and was not prepared to put time and effort into getting to know individual players. We are hoping that by resuming control of production, including advertising, we will be able to rebuild our advertising base to the point where Preview is a going, and growing, concern.
As this issue of Preview will be the last issue produced by T&F, I would like to thank the T&F production team for individually doing their best to produce Preview under what were sometimes difficult circumstances (COVID, remember that?!), and sometimes a difficult and demanding Editor. All the very best for your own futures and for us, the Preview Editorial team and our loyal readers, it is onwards and upwards!
This Christmas issue of Preview features an article by Ken Witherly. The article entitled “What lies beneath revisited – supergene enrichment and conductivity” builds on a talk he gave to AEGC in Perth in 2019, and on talks he gave to a number of ASEG branches when he was in Australia at the end of last year. Ken enjoins us to think outside the box – always important in exploration! This issue also features, as we have come to expect at this time of year, summaries of theses completed in geophysics in Australia in 2023 (Education matters). As Marina Pervukhina says, this compendium is noteworthy in that we received contributions from nineteen students. That number suggests that there is still a significant number of postgraduate students in geophysics in Australia. Some of these students have participated in one of the CAGE field camps (CAGE 2023 is reported on in this issue). This popularity of these camps also suggests that student interest in geophysics is alive and well – so maybe it is not all doom and gloom out there!
In other news and commentary, in this issue of Preview David Denham (Canberra observed) reflects on the latest data from the UNEP that suggests that the chances of limiting global warming to 2.0°C by 2050 are close to zero. He also takes a look at the latest figures on exploration investment in the Resources and Energy Quarterly for 2023. Mike Hatch (Environmental geophysics) has prevailed on Dave Allen to give us a lesson on the use of microwaves for communication in geophysics. Terry Harvey (Mineral geophysics) reminds us of the dos and don’ts of follow-up geophysical surveys. Mick Micenko (Seismic window) is intrigued by LinkedIn commentary on split spread seismic data acquisition. Tim Keeping (Data trends), updates us on big data and machine learning, and Ian James (Webwaves) muses on what we can learn from the Optus outage.
Enjoy, and on behalf of the Preview Editorial Team, a safe and happy festive season to you all!
Lisa Worrall
Preview Editor