1. The Business Manager be empowered to receive and accept nominations of new members. The BM should check that the nomination form is correctly completed, is from someone interested in plant pathology and that the nominee is proposed and seconded by financial members of the Society.

2. If satisfied that the nomination is acceptable the Business Manager should process the payment and when the payment is accepted by the bank he should advise the publisher/editor-in-chief so that appropriate journals can be despatched to the new member.

3. The Business Manager should also write a letter of welcome to the new member providing details of such things as the next conference, the home page site etc.

4. The Business Manager should provide details (name, address, etc and proposer and seconder) to the Management Committee before each meeting so that the Management Committee can ratify the actions of the Business Manager.

5. If the Business Manager has any concerns about the nomination he should refer it to the Management Committee.

Procedures for election of Fellows.

Following discussions at the AGM, it was decided that there should be a closing date for nominations, set in October, to enable the outcome to be determined in time for ratification at the AGM in March. This would facilitate the task of the Sub-committee for Election of Fellows, and allow its members to compare applications. The criterion remains 'contribution to the science of plant pathology', and the nominee should be asked to identify 10 key papers from their full publication list and to provide three copies of five of those papers for consideration by the Sub-committee. The closing date for nominations to be considered in time for the following AGM is 31 October

 Councillors

Regional Councillors within Australia are required to submit a brief report .... carried over. The allocation to each State Branch, currently $5 per member, is contingent on receipt of this brief report.

Subscription renewal notices

The Business Manager should forward a draft subscription renewal notice to the Management Committee for ratification before mailing it out to the membership.

Editor-in-Chief

1. The EC would be responsible (in conjunction with the Senior Editors and the Management Committee) for all matters relating to journal policy. This includes content, style and appearance. For example, the content of the journal may be considered to be inappropriate and it may be decided not to publish papers of a taxonomic nature (this is an example of a policy decision and not a suggestion). Another example of a policy change might be to group papers in the journal into areas of interest (mycology, nematology, virology, bacteriology etc) instead of the current order, which relates strictly to order of acceptance.

2. The EC needs to have a good general knowledge of plant pathology and a reasonable ability in scientific writing. Some experience as an editor would be preferable.

3. The EC would oversee the appointment of Senior Editors, with the term of appointment usually being 3 years (unless the Senior Editor wishes to continue for a longer period). The EC would advise the Senior Editors of their responsibilities and provide them with appropriate material for the reviewing of manuscripts.

4. The EC would receive all papers from authors, acknowledge their receipt, send them to the appropriate Senior Editor for reviewing, advise authors of their acceptance after review, check that the reviewed paper is acceptable after considering the comments of the reviewers and Senior Editor, and make appropriate revisions (probably minor) either on the disc or hard copy. The EC would check that figures supplied by authors are of a satisfactory quality for publication.

5. If requested, the EC would advise authors of the status of their manuscript during the reviewing and publication process.

6. The EC should be involved in situations where there is a major disagreement between reviewers over the acceptability of a manuscript (eg. one reviewer recommends rejection and the other recommends acceptance with revision).

7. The EC would forward revised papers (hard copy and disc) to the Technical Editor for preparation for publication.

8. The EC would collate a list of all reviewers for the year and provide this list to the Technical Editor for publication in the fist issue each year, with an acknowledgment of the contributions made by reviewers.

9. The EC would be responsible for maintaining and revising as necessary the Notes for Contributors published in the first issue each year.

10. The EC would invite authors to submit a photo for the cover of the journal and then select the one most suitable for each issue. This would be sent to the Technical Editor along with the caption for the inside front cover.

1. The TC would prepare each manuscript for the publisher. The type of material to be supplied could vary according to the needs of the publisher/printer. Technical editing involves checking that spelling, punctuation and grammar are correct and that all aspects of the text are according to APP style. This includes such things as the paper title, the authors and appropriate superscripts, authors' addresses, heading styles, captions for tables and figures, references and acceptance date. If a disc copy is to be supplied to the publisher then all details would need to be correct before this is done as the publisher in the future may have no knowledge of plant pathology or even of science.

It is possible that the TC may wish to assume the role of publisher. If so and again, depending on the requirements of the printer, it may be necessary to supply either a hard copy or disc copy to the printer. If a hard copy is to be supplied to the printer (as at present) the paper would have to be prepared with suitable desktop publishing software and printed on a laser printer in final form ready to be printed. All tables would need to be set out and appropriate places made for figures and half tone illustrations. If the TC wished to act in this capacity, the actual role would need to be defined and payment negotiated.

2. The TC needs a good knowledge of grammar and needs to have an "eye for detail" so that consistency in style can be maintained throughout a paper and throughout the journal.

3. Depending on the above arrangements, either the TC or EC would need to receive a proof of each paper from the publisher or printer and send it to the authors for checking. The TC or EC would also need to arrange for the ordering of reprints from the printer.

4. The TC or EC would then send the corrected proof or final copy to the printer.

5. Mailing. Either the EC, the TC or the printer could be involved in the mailout and depending on who does the mailout, it may be necessary for the TC or perhaps the Business Manager to supply mailing wrappers or labels. In any event, the Business Manager will need to provide information from the database to enable the wrappers/ labels to be prepared. Again, payment may be necessary for the mailout (currently $250).