- The Fourth IEMDC’03 would be held in Madison, WI in June 2003.

- Ron Harley announced the upcoming “5^th IEEE International Symposium on Diagnosis for Electric Machines, Power Electronics and Drives” to be held in Atlanta, GA, on August 24-26, 2003.  He also encouraged authors to submit papers to this conference.

- Bruno requested that all discussions and comments made at these sessions be professional and that we conduct ourselves with professionalism and dignity.  Spurious comments are not welcomed during these proceedings. 

- Bruno brought up the issue of the Best paper award selection procedure:

• Current process:

  • Authors send paper for Transactions review (59% received sofar)

  • Top 6 or 7 score getters go into a pool By March 1st 2003

  • Papers are pool reviewed by committee (current and past chairmen, etc.)

  • Awards are announced in IAS magazine July 2003 issue

  • If the paper is received after 11/1/2002, there is no time to review

The question is: Should selection date be moved back to October (next conference)?

Some salient points made from the numerous discussion points are:

• The sooner we can make the decision known about the best paper award the better the chances that the authors can make it to the meeting to receive the award.

• Many people encouraged the use of manuscript central for these reviews.  They are web based and is very convenient to use.  This can expedite the review process.

• A small digression was made in the discussion regarding the present state of the review process.  Some proposed that all papers should be made available for transaction review.  Bruno stated that with the acceptance letter, the authors are made aware that they must resubmit the paper for best paper review process.  

• It was agreed that the best paper review should be separate from the transactions paper review.

• The submittal date for best paper review has been changed to 12/1/02. 

- Vendor presentations:  There is a proposal to include vendor presentations in the Electric Machinery Committee.  

• Should the Electric Machines Committee organize a session for vendors?

• Presentation on company products, but of technical nature.

• Papers NOT published in Proceedings or Transactions.

• Approved by Executive committee and some other committees.

Pertinent discussion points:

• The session needs to be organized like any other session.  No real structure to the session at present.  The session organizer needs to go out and solicit vendors.  

• The intent is to bring in more industry participation.  APEC is the model for this session.

• Various discussions were held on whether the vendor paper should be included in the proceedings.  Whether the vendor papers should be part of a regular session or whether the session should be separate from the regular sessions.  Many cited the conflict between the regular sessions and the vendor session.  Some proposed that the session be a poster session.

• In the end, it was left up to the Executive Committee to decide how the session should be handled and to work with the Industrial Drives Committee on the organization of this session.  Motioned by Crescimbini, seconded by Capolino. Unanimously approved.

VI.  2002 Meeting organization:

As far as the Electric Machines Committee is concerned, the 2003 IAS meeting will consist of 10 sessions, running from Monday morning to Thursday afternoon.   

One tutorial has been proposed:

Interior Permanent Magnet Machines, Tom Jahns, Nicola Bianchi.  This would be a full day tutorial.

Babak Fahimi and Hamoid Toliyat would also like to propose a tutorial on SR machines.  The deadline for the tutorial is Dec./Jan. time frame.

Paper Review Procedure Discussion:

Prof. Tim Miller requested that there be a session on thermal calculations.  Since there is no formal procedure to request sessions devoted to a given area, all that can be done is to emphasize the area by key word in the call for papers.

This request opened up a new discussion on how the papers are reviewed and how papers are organized into sessions.  

How the sessions are organized at present: The program chair organizes the papers into general areas, these abstracts are sent to the session organizers, which are then sent to three reviewers, including the session organizer.  The reviewers review all the abstracts and assign a score to all the abstracts, which are returned to the session organizers.  The session organizers then score the abstracts according to all the reviewer scores.  The session organizer advises the program chair as to where the cutoff on each session should be.  The program chair determines the final papers in each session, which may include the inclusion of papers not originally reviewed for that session but is determined to be worthy of inclusion in the final program.

Proposed Motion by Pragasen Pillay, Seconded by Tom Lipo:  That all the papers are sent to the session organizers without clear grouping.  The abstracts are disseminated to the reviewers as before. The scoring of the abstracts will be uniform and the session organizers turn in all raw scores to the program chair.  The program chair decides which papers are accepted by the numerical scores.  The program chair will then organize these papers into sessions.  One opposed, everyone else accpet.