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Figure 1. Organizational chart of the committee structure of the Acoustical Society of America.
From the President
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reader, editor, and reviewer experience in all publications processes. This objective is not new and was already a prior- ity for Editor in Chief Jim Lynch but having the support of Task Force 3 has sharpened and defined the focus of efforts. The time to first decision has already been reduced from 75 days to 57 days, and the time between acceptance and pub- lication has been reduced from 45 days to 30 days. Further improvements are in the works and will be accelerated with the hiring of our new Managing Editor Liz Bury. The key- word search list is now current and complete. Other actions underway include the promotion of our publications, a the- saurus project, and the updating of templates (LaTeX and Word) for The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America (JASA), Proceedings of Meetings on Acoustics (POMA), and JASA-Express Letters (JASA-EL).
Task Force 4 was set up to address Goal 4, “Financial Stew- ardship,” with the priority objective of developing and imple- menting a new business model, including for the ASA Foun-
8 | Acoustics Today | Fall 2016
dation Fund. Significant progress has been made. The task force has now defined the charge of the new ASA Finance Committee to be responsible for making recommendations to the Executive Council on long-term (greater than one fis- cal year) financial decisions. Anthony Atchley has agreed to chair this committee.
Having crowed about the successes arising from the Strate- gic Plan, I think it is important to step back and realize that there are hundreds of volunteers working on many existing administrative and technical committees. The Public Rela- tions Committee and the Education in Acoustics Commit- tee are two examples that are very active and visible to ASA members. Other committees, such as Investments, work hard in the background. The creation of the task forces was not meant to displace these existing committees. The Strate- gic Plan has defined the direction for the ASA over the next 5 or 10 years. All committees are working with this direction in mind. The task forces and the committees can support and augment each other's efforts. Indeed, each task force was populated with members from the relevant ASA committees to ensure that the lines of communication were in place.
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