The Clay Minerals Society - Elements Magazine

The Clay Minerals Societywww.clays.orgThe President’s CornerSmall societies offer many advantages. I am reminded of these eachtime the CMS and its affiliates meet. An intimate conference allowsone a greater opportunity to meet a larger proportion of the attendeesand to get to know the organizers and the scientific community. Thesepersonal connections provide the means for small societies to sustainthemselves through these changing and dynamic times.Andrew Thomas and Katarzyna Gorniak at the Mid-European Clay Conference in PolandI had the opportunity to attend the Mid-European Clay Conference inZakopane, Poland, this past September. This conference was an excellentwindow into the vibrant European clay community. Completewith hiking and river rafting, posters, scintillating talks, and vodkashots, the conference exceeded my expectations with respect to contentand hospitality. The general chair, Katarzyna Gorniak, along with hersession chairs and organizing team, are to be recognized and congratulated.It was a spectacular event.We hope to see many of our new friends at the upcoming CMS AnnualMeeting in Billings, Montana, on June 5–11, 2009. Please renew yourmembership and take advantage of the membership discounts. It is mypleasure to work with you all. More information on the CMS is availableat www.clays.org.ElementsAndrew ThomasPresident, The Clay Minerals SocietyChevron Energy Technology Company, Houston, Texas, USAandrew.thomas@chevron.comThe April 2009 issue of Elements will feature a theme based specificallyon clays. This is a key opportunity to promote our scienceto those who do not normally engage with it. A set of six papers,guest-edited by Derek Bain, will describe various aspects of bentonite,its geology, its uses, etc. The Society wishes to promote itssubject by sending free copies of the issue to those who don’tnormally receive Elements, e.g. your dean, a colleague, students,and funding bodies local and national. Please send names, postaladdresses and e-mail addresses (up to two per member) to MaryGray (cms@clays.org) at the Society office, and we will ensure thatthey receive a copy of that issue of Elements, together with a letterfrom the president.the Clay Minerals Society at GSAThe CMS contributed to anumber of sessions at therecent Joint Societies conference,held in October 2008, inHouston. Attending were morethan 9000 delegates, manyfrom outside the usualGeological Society of Americacohorts (e.g. from the tri-societies:Crop Science, SoilScience, and Agronomy). Theaim of the conference as awhole, and of our sessions inparticular, was to appeal to thecross-disciplinary delegate.Clays and Clay Minerals editorJoe Stucki delivered a lectureon the crossovers in the historiesof the Soil Science Societyand The Clay Minerals Society.His lecture will soon be madeavailable on the CMS website.CMS BoothFor the first time, the Societyhad its own booth at the conferenceand, given the crossdisciplinarynature of the conference,it was an idealoccasion for the CMS to showits wares and talk about membershipto visitors. The boothwas manned largely by Ray andSue Ferrell, but president AndyThomas and other Societymembers (amongst them PaulClays and Clay MineralsSchroeder and Warren Huff)also did turns. The booth displayeda banner bearing thenew Society logo as a backdrop.Ray Ferrell had a novel methodof attracting attention to thebooth (no, it wasn’t hissinging!): he had printed andframed some of the photographsfrom the “Images ofClay Archive,” and a draw washeld at the end of the conferencefrom amongst those visitorsto the booth who had leftbusiness cards. Membershipforms were available, and allSociety publications were forsale also. Related booths fromthe Mineralogical Society ofAmerica, the MineralogicalAssociation of Canada, theGeological Association ofCanada, and the GeochemicalSociety were found in the samepart of the exhibition hall. Wehope to continue to have abooth at future GSA meetings.If you attend GSA regularly,please do volunteer at thebooth for a couple of hours.Suggestions for ways ofattracting the attention of passersbyare always welcome—anything to avoid a repeat ofthe Ferrell falsetto!It’s the time of year when you can help your journal. Libraries aroundthe world are renewing their subscriptions. When that form comesaround asking which journals need to be kept and which are to be cut,please do your best to ensure that Clays and Clay Minerals is retained.The funding generated by library subscriptions is all important to thework of the Society and supports many of our other activities. It is alsothe key means by which we promote our science.Support the JournalEqually important is that readers use and cite the content in our journal.So much depends on citation numbers/impact factors/ratings thesedays, so it is imperative that our content be read and cited by as manypeople as possible. We want to hear from you about what your citationhabits are. What do you need to see in CCM in order for you to cite itmore? The science is of the highest quality, ensured by our editorialteam—what we need to do is ensure that it is cited quickly and widely.How can you help? Well, get your colleagues to refer to the journal.Send them information about papers that will be of interest to them.This will constitute the greatest single piece of marketing we canachieve, and it costs nothing more than a little of your time. Start byscanning the list of contents on the following page and identify materialof interest to your colleagues.Elements 414December 2008