Johnson

Executive Editors of SPE Reservoir Evaluation & Engineering alternate writing the Executive Summary. This issue’s summary is by Alan Johnson.

Welcome to the April 2006 edition of SPEREE. This is my first editorial as Executive Editor, and I thought I would briefly introduce myself, followed by some insight, from my own perspective, on the review process. But I would like to start by thanking my predecessor, Erdal Ozkan, for his great work in helping to maintain the quality and success of SPEREE over the past 2 years. I only hope that I will be able to live up to his example.

I am currently working as a petrophysicist with Shell in Aberdeen, which, perhaps coincidentally, is where I started out in the mid-1970s, armed with a degree in physics from Aberdeen U. In the course of my career I have worked in Abu Dhabi, The Netherlands, London, and Vietnam, but not all with Shell. For some years I worked for Hamilton Oil, BHP Petroleum, and as an independent consultant before I rejoined Shell again.

While my core discipline is petrophysics, I have held a range of jobs within general petroleum engineering and well and production operations. I hope I bring to the post of Executive Editor some wider experience in reservoir evaluation than that defined by my core specialty alone.

I realize now that I have been involved in the SPE editorial process for almost 20 years, having started as a Technical Editor in the late 1980s. Before accepting the post of Executive Editor I served as Review Chair of the Borehole Petrophysics group for 5 years. This position is normally held for only 2 years, and while those who know me might support the view that the extended term came as result of my being a rather slow learner, the need for continuity during the transition to the online review system and some hiccups in the succession process also played a factor. Also playing a significant role was my inability to say “no.”

It has been noted many times that the reviewers on the Editorial Review Committee are all volunteers. I often ask myself what motivates people to take on this task. Speaking for myself, over the years as a Technical Editor I considered retiring myself on a number of occasions. What kept me going was the discipline I found that the review process imposed on me to really read and understand the papers and references, and the fruitful discussions I had with other reviewers and advisors. While it is important that we all maintain our skills and awareness of the latest technologies and understanding in our particular area of the industry, without rigorous self-discipline it is all too easy for this maintenance to get superseded by the demands of day-to-day work.

As I mentioned earlier, the inability to say “no” also plays a factor in my particular case. This probably reflects some deeper psychological issue, which perhaps we won’t delve into further. However, as I overheard on the radio recently, one of the reasons that we seem to be so pressed for time nowadays is that we tend to overbook ourselves. It was suggested that this may reflect our inability to accurately forecast how much free time we will have in the future. The problem is that we do not make allowance for all those unexpected time demands that always crop up. This leads us to say yes to tasks that we really cannot hope to complete.

In managing the review process, problems can arise when individuals agree to take on a review (or even Review Chair) assignment but fail to complete it on time. This inevitably leads to late reassignments, even later reviews, and, consequently, frustrated authors. Although it would seem to be all too easy to put one’s hand up and ask for the job to be reassigned early, the tendency does seem to be to keep on going and hope to have some “future time” that never materializes.

Being aware of such factors may well be useful to us all, in the review process or elsewhere in our personal or working lives.