Call for IBAME member elections in eligible countries (05/04/15)

Since 1993, the main rule of delegating members by a national Mössbauer community to IBAME, the International Board on the Applications of the Mössbauer Effect has been that the number of IBAME members elected in a country were determined by the participation figures by that national Mössbauer community at the last three International Conferences on the Application of the Mössbauer Effect (ICAME). However, after two decades of this practice we had to realize that this approach became outdated. Indeed, results achieved by Mössbauer spectroscopy are more and more presented at topical conferences and also the role of regional Mössbauer conferences increased significantly. As a consequence of this fact, national communities having very important contribution to Mössbauer spectroscopy became underrepresented in IBAME or, in some cases, have completely lost their representation in the Board.

Therefore, in September 2013, IBAME decided to suspend the old Constitution and charged the Structure Committee to elaborate a new Constitution that is expected to be adopted by the Board at its upcoming meetings in September 2015 in Hamburg. However, in order to increase the legitimacy of the new Constitution, a provisional Constitution was adopted by IBAME to open the way to elections in countries with significant contribution to Mössbauer spectroscopy but presently not represented in the Board. The provisional Constitution took effect on 25 January 2015.

According to the provisional rules, should a country have no elected member to the Board according to the rules of the old Constitution, that country shall be eligible to elect one member to the Board provided that country has at least 5 active Mössbauer spectroscopists (AMS). An AMS is defined as a living person who has published at least 5 Mössbauer papers during the last 10 years or published at least 100 Mössbauer papers since 1958. A Mössbauer paper is regarded as a paper to which a researcher has made a significant contribution based on his/her expertise in laboratory Mössbauer spectroscopy and/or nuclear resonant scattering of synchrotron radiation.

The IBAME Secretary has recently contacted representatives of national Mössbauer communities which, according to the statistics deduced from the publication database of the Mössbauer Effect Data Center (MEDC), fulfil the above criteria and, therefore, became eligible for electing a new member to IBAME. Nevertheless, it may happen that some eligible countries have been overlooked in the AMS database and, consequently, have not been contacted. Therefore, with this call, IBAME asks all national Mössbauer communities to let us know should they feel to be eligible to elect a new member to IBAME. In this case we ask to submit the list of at least 5 AMSs along with the list of their at least 5 Mössbauer papers from the last 10 years as an attachment to the e-mail sent to the Executive Committee, i.e. to the Chair with Cc to the Vice Chairthe Vice Chair.

Elections shall be carried out amongst the AMSs affiliated with institutions in the given country, preferably by secret ballot and, if possible, not later than 31 May 2015. Elected members may join IBAME immediately and will have voting right in IBAME written procedures preparing the draft of the new Constitution. This also holds for new members elected after the above date, however, the mandate of all members elected in 2015 will expire on 31 December 2020.

As a special courtesy, MEDC made available its publication database for the public and will keep it open until 30 September 2015 for free by logging in with the username guest and password guest. During this period all Mössbauer spectroscopists may wish to check whether all of their Mössbauer publications are properly included in the database. Should this not be the case, please contact MEDC so that they may update the database and so the next AMS database contains more accurate data both of individuals and national Mössbauer communities.