Ron Hacker, Chair – Publications Committee.  Email: ron.hacker@crt.net.au

Opportunity in web site management

Camilla Osborn has stepped down as Web Site Editor after two years in the role. An opportunity now exists for a new appointee to take over this interesting and important role (see advertisement). Managing the web site is a key function in maintaining and extending the Society’s public profile so if you have an interest in managing web-based media, or would like to learn, please contact me. In the interim, Dr Noelene Duckett will act as Web Site Editor in addition to her role as Editor of Range Management Newsletter.

Archival material on the web site

All past issues of Range Management Newsletter, and its predecessor the Range Assessment Newsletter, are available on the web site but a challenge remains to make their content readily searchable. Noelene Duckett has compiled an index of all published articles but displaying this on the web site is not straight forward and we are seeking advice from our web site provider (Fat Beehive, Sydney) as to the best way to do this. A similar issue exists with proceedings of past biennial conferences. A number of these are already available on the web site. The remainder have been scanned, courtesy of the Global Rangelands initiative of the University of Arizona, but are not yet visible in the public area of the site. Implementing the best means of making all this archival material publicly available and readily searchable is a top priority for this year.

The Rangeland Journal

Constraints within CSIRO Publishing over the Christmas – New Year period have delayed the signing of our newcontract for publishing of The Rangeland Journal for 2018-22. I expect that these matters will be resolved in the near future and in the meantime the processing of manuscripts is proceeding without disruption.

Volume 39 (2017) was finalised in January with the publication of issues 5 and 6 as the composite Restore, Regenerate, Revegetate special issue. This large special issue contains a number of papers that have already attracted considerable attention and should contribute positively to our Impact Factor over the next two years.

Dr Steven Bray (Department of Agriculture and Fisheries, Brisbane) and Professor Graciela Metternicht (School of Biological, Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of New South Wales) were appointed Associate Editors of the journal for an initial three-year term from 1 January.