Appointment of Editorial Board for the Forum on Education

FEd Chair, Ernie Malamud, has appointed a newsletter editorial board of Wolfgang Christian (Davidson College), Ramon Lopez (University of Texas at Arlington) and Peggy Norris (LBNL). The charge to the Editorial Board comes from a recent policy adopted by the APS Council:

APS encourages all of its units to provide newsletters to their members. Many of these newsletters contain only news about the unit’s activities; others contain articles and opinion pieces. Today with electronic transmission, it is very easy for bloggers and others to pick up items from these newsletters and present them as the policy or opinion of APS. In order to prevent this, each paper and pdf version of the newsletter must contain a clear statement that the articles and opinion pieces are not peer refereed and represent solely the views of the authors and not necessarily the views of APS. In the case of online newsletters available in html format, each individual article or opinion piece must have this disclaimer clearly visible as part of the posting.

APS also requests that each unit that regularly includes opinion pieces in its newsletter appoint an editorial board that oversees the work of the editors. This board should have the authority to recommend the discontinuation of one or more of the newsletter editors if the editors do not abide by this policy or if the editor shows other behavior that the board finds unacceptable. The unit’s executive committee will then make the final decision on this matter.

Note that the Review Board does NOT pre-approve the newsletters. Their charge is to read the newsletters and "blow the whistle" if they feel the need. In addition they have been asked to submit a short report to the FEd Executive Committee at our annual meeting.

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Disclaimer - The articles and opinion pieces found in this issue of the APS Forum on Education Newsletter are not peer refereed and represent solely the views of the authors and not necessarily the views of APS.