[ASA] President's end of year update

[Stas Shabala]

Dear ASA Members,

As the end of year approaches, I would like to take this opportunity to give a summary of activities of our Society since the AGM and ASM.

Astronomy-wide activities. The new Decadal Plan for Australian Astronomy is now well developed. As an ex officio member of the National Committee for Astronomy, the body which is charged with putting together the Decadal Plan, the ASA President has a front row view of the Plan’s development. My thanks to all those in the community who have contributed to the Decadal Plan effort.

Publication landscape. The publication landscape in Australian astronomy has recently changed significantly with MNRAS no longer being a fee-free option for the majority of astronomers at Australian institutions. The CAUL consortium<https://url.au.m.mimecastprotect.com/s/EabYC2xMQziEOmr4mfnf2I5n2uG?domain=caul.libguides.com> has not managed to negotiate a fee-free publishing options. Several institutions have seriously explored the possibility of an “add-on” agreement with Oxford University Press (the publisher of MNRAS), but in most cases the costs for this (which are negotiated at the institution level and are commercial in confidence) are prohibitively high. In better news, most ASA members should be able to continue to publish fee-free with PASA next year. The first few months of 2025 will tell us if the volume of submissions to PASA will change significantly as a result of the MNRAS situation – and if it does, ASA Council will work with the new-look PASA leadership team of Minh Huynh (Editor-in-Chief) and Andrew Hopkins (Deputy EiC) to ensure that PASA editorial processes are appropriately supported. I would like to take this opportunity to thank outgoing Editor-in-Chief Ivo Seitenzahl for his outstanding leadership of PASA over the past two years.

2024 ASM. The Annual Scientific Meeting is always a big undertaking. This year’s organisers gave themselves an extra challenge, organising our Society’s very first “online first” meeting. My thanks again to Vanessa Moss, Clancy James and their teams across Australia for all the hard work behind the scenes to make this a success. For those of you who have filled in the post-meeting survey, that information will be used by ASA Council to determine the format of ASMs beyond 2025. As for next year, I look forward to seeing you in Adelaide. My thanks in advance to Gavin Rowell and the Adelaide team.

ASA Chapters. As always, our Chapters have been busy.

  *   The ECR Chapter has continued its successful ECR symposium series, and has also secured additional funding from CSIRO towards the Software Development Prize; this complements the existing generous funding from the ARDC, and ensures that the monetary value of this prize matches other ASA awards. On longer timescales, the ECR Chapter worked with the NCA to organise a ECR-specific virtual Town Hall, ensuring that ECR voices were heard in the development of the Decadal Plan.
  *   The IDEA Chapter has been preparing for the next round of Pleiades award submissions, which opened in early November with a submission deadline of 13 February. The Chapter has undertaken an internal review of the Pleiades process, and intends to hold consultation sessions to help prospective applicant institutions with the process – so watch this space.
  *   The Group for Astroparticle Physics (GAP) held a session on “Synergies between particle and astrophysics in the hunt for dark matter” at the December AIP summer meeting.
  *   Our latest Chapter, in Time Domain Astronomy, held an “unconference” in September. By all accounts this went well, with several new collaborations as an outcome.
  *   The EPOC Chapter has turned its attention to the total solar eclipse, which will be seen across Australia in 2028. We hope to have an Eclipse Working Group set up in 2025 to progress our community’s preparations for this exciting event.

To wrap up, a slightly sobering note. A couple of months ago I was shown survey data, commissioned by Science and Technology Australia (STA), which showed that a large fraction of Australians did not think that the funding crisis in Australian science is worth worrying about. I was surprised to learn that youngest demographic groups were the least likely to care.

With the Federal election on the horizon, my wish for you all for this festive season is to spread the zest for the magic of science far and wide.

Stay safe and enjoy the break.

Stas

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Professor Stas Shabala
(he/him/his)
President, Astronomical Society of Australia
Discipline of Physics | School of Natural Sciences | College of Science and Engineering
University of Tasmania
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