Dean Oliver

Because the vast majority of Society of Petroleum Engineers members work for industry, the focus of the Society is often on the applied and practical aspects of the discipline. The focus of SPE Journal, however, is on the fundamental science related to petroleum engineering, so it should not be surprising to discover that the authors of papers in SPEJ reflect quite a different composition than the Society as a whole. If we segregate authors into three categories of employers, the breakdown of employers of first authors over the past 2.5 years is approximately as follows: 22% industry, 4% national laboratories, and 74% universities. The classification is not precise, as in several cases, the affiliation of the first author is listed as industry, but I have classified the author as being with a university if the work was clearly performed during the PhD process. The large number of papers written by authors from universities can probably be explained by the focus of SPEJ on fundamental research in the science of petroleum engineering. Many of the university-authored papers are written by PhD candidates who are required to develop new technologies and are sometimes required to publish in a peer-reviewed journal before completion of their PhD. Although it is clear that some companies do reward their employees for publications, many of the manuscripts that are submitted by industry are not fundamental in nature and hence are not suitable for SPEJ.

A second way of classifying papers is by the location of employment of the first author at the time of submitting the manuscript. Approximately 71% of the SPEJ papers in the past 2.5 years were written by authors whose employment (or location of study) was North America, 1% were employed in South America, 22% were located in Europe, and 6% were employed in the Middle East. Because of the multinational nature of SPE, the lack of diversity in the locations of author employment is somewhat more surprising than the dominance of academia over industry in SPEJ authorship. What we see, in fact, is the impact of a relatively small number of universities (approximately 10) in North America and Europe that turn out fairly large numbers of PhD students each year. Interestingly, although these universities are located in North America and Europe, the students who are often the first authors are the citizens of many countries throughout the world. Note, for example, that while papers from Chinese universities were poorly represented in the past 2.5 years, almost 30% of the manuscripts were authored by someone of Chinese background. Similar discrepancies exist for authors from Africa and Latin America.

The large changes in the petroleum industry in the past 30 years are also reflected in the changes in authorship. Table 1 compares the distribution of author affiliations from 1997 with the current distribution. Two changes are fairly remarkable. The first is the complete reversal of the positions of industry and universities with respect to authorship of fundamental research. That change was presumably precipitated by the closure of many industrial petroleum research laboratories in the 1980s and 90s. Those that did not close often changed their emphasis to technical support. Those changes were accompanied by a shift in research funding from the corporation, which often had long-term goals, to the business units, which typically had shorter term goals. The second major change is the location of employment of authors. In 1977, all first authors were located in the US, Canada, or Mexico. Today, almost 30% of the first authors are from continents other than North America. This change is certainly welcome.

With this issue, you may notice a change in the titles of members of the Editorial Review Board; Review Chairs have become Associate Editors. This change reflects more accurately the responsibilities of the Editorial Board for SPEJ and is more consistent with the titles at other journals. SPEJ currently has approximately 34 Associate Editors. Each editor handles 5–10 papers per year. Their primary responsibilities are to determine whether or not a manuscript is suitable for SPEJ, to identify appropriate reviewers, and to request that they review the manuscript. When reviews are returned, the Associate Editor summarizes the recommendations of the reviewers and recommends a decision to the Executive Editor. Critical qualities of Associate Editors are familiarity with the review process, expertise in at least one area of petroleum engineering, a network of potential reviewers, and a degree of tact. With this issue we welcome Jing Wan of ExxonMobil Production Research as a new Associate Editor. She brings expertise in the areas of simulation, well performance, geomechanics, completions design, and upscaling.