The Society
Impact of SVP on Science

Goal:

To adopt and implement a three-tiered approach to proactively link our science with related disciplines, funding sources, and government regulators.


Key Steps to Achieve the Goal:

  1. Commissioning Interdisciplinary Papers for JVP
    Promote a continuing series of interdisciplinary articles coauthored by a vertebrate palaeontologist and a scientist from a related discipline. These would aim to lay out controversies and possible solutions to scientific problems that intersect with vertebrate paleontology (e.g., climatic change, evolution, environment, earth history, etc.). These papers would offer a model for further synthetic research. Having coauthors from other disciplines would draw readers from those disciplines to JVP and into the VP literature.
  2. Penrose-Style Conferences and Field Excursions
    As identified by the Development Committee, one of our fund-raising initiatives is to seek endowment funds to support organization of publicized conferences or field excursions that revolve around an interdisciplinary problem that intersects with VP. The conferences would be composed of invited speakers from VP and the other relevant discipline(s), perhaps on the model of the Helsinki series of environmental conferences (e.g., http://www.helsinki.fi/bioscience/spatialecology/workshop8.html ). The field excursions would be discussion visits to sites that provide critical evidence for the theme problem. Proceedings of these events would be published first as individual papers in JVP then collected together and republished as a topical book.
  3. Foundation of a Non-Profit Institute
    Provide funding, conference management, and advocacy through a non-profit "Exploration Institute." This would start out small, perhaps to manage the conferences and field excursions mentioned above. The long-term aim would be to create an endowment and recognizable name such that the Institute would be a source of competitive funding for VP and a media and advocacy point for the discipline, serving as a counterweight to the conservative Christian Discovery Institute (http://www.discovery.org/).


Implementation:

  1. Interdisciplinary Papers for JVP
    Work with the Publications Committee to solicit interdisciplinary papers for JVP.
  2. SVP sponsored conferences and field excursions
    Work with Development Committee to raise funds and plan SVP-sponsored conferences and field excursions.
  3. Non-Profit Institute
    Work with Development Committee for long-term planning of a Non-Profit Institute to support advocacy of vertebrate paleontology and related issues.