AAPG’s online journal, Search and Discovery, has been striving to provide the latest geoscientific information for the past six years.
Anyone can access the online library and no password is needed.
All articles are posted in two format versions: HTML and PDF for ease of use.
According to John Shelton, adviser to Datapages, no major changes have been made to Search and Discovery since its inception in 2000.
Shelton, who was elected editor for the AAPG BULLETIN 1975-79, recipient of AAPG’s Distinguished Service Award in 1980, Honorary Membership in 1990 and was AAPG vice president 1988-89, said what has changed about the program is the need for AAPG to post more articles per year to the online library.
“We’re hoping to post more articles than we have in the past,” Shelton said, “And, we’d like to post one per working day.”
“And there are reasons to do this,” he added. “AAPG’s probably publishing fewer than 250 articles per year.” But the number of potential articles that could come from presentations given at the annual and international meetings is greater.
“We’re hopeful that at the various meetings we’ll be able to get, routinely, a number of presentations – both posters and oral,” he said.
Calling All Authors
This is an appealing offer for the author that wants to get their presentation out there now. The process for getting an article posted on Search and Discovery is less complicated for the author than the process for getting an article approved for presentation at a meeting.
“We want to make it easy on the author because we understand the people who are doing the best work, generally their time is limited,” said Shelton, “And they’re usually not being promoted on the basis of how many articles they post.”
Shelton along with Mike Horn, Doug Peter, Ron Hart and Ted Beaumont make up the editorial board that seeks, solicits and approves new articles to be posted online.
“The advantage of Search and Discovery is that we can put things up soon after they (authors) send it,” Shelton said. “We try to make it so that the author doesn’t have to do anything. He’s already made his presentation; give it to us, we’ll post it, he added.
Contact
It does take some time to get the articles and images posted, Shelton said.
Larry Gerken, Search and Discovery webmaster, is the primary source for loading articles and images to the site. And because Shelton believes geologists are visual scientists, they will add color or animation to images and link to any references, if available.
So if you missed that awe-inspiring presentation on the Covenant Field at the annual meeting in Calgary, or you know a colleague who presented a paper recently on a play of interest to you; and you want more details, log on to Search and Discovery at searchanddiscovery.net.
If you have a scientific presentation that you think would make a good addition to Search and Discovery, call John Shelton at 1-918-560-2640, or Email.
Shelton is optimistic about the future of Search and Discovery.
“The more articles we can put up, the better we are disseminating scientific information,” he said.