Obituary – Henry Edward James

The SAIMM would like to inform members of the passing away of Mr Henry Edward James, a Past President (1985-1986). Mr James was born on 19 April 1939 and passed away on Friday, 1 October 2021. He joined the SAIMM as a Fellow on 20 February 1976 and was awarded Honorary Life Fellowship on 23 June 1995.

SAIMM Past Presidents and Council members passed on their condolences and commented that Henry was a fine man who cared much about other people. He will be remembered fondly and missed greatly by everyone who knew him.

He is survived by his two sons, Marc and Darrell, his sister, Dalene Henry, his daughter-in-law, Amanda and his two grandsons, Michael and Ethan.

An extended obituary will be added to our website and published in the SAIMM Journal in due course.

(Left) Henry and Joan James  (Right) Henry James with other Past Presidents of the SAIMM.

How to identify and respond to the continuing threat of predatory publishers and journals

History and background
It is now more than a decade that Jeffrey Beall - a former librarian at the University of Colorado in Denver – coined the term ‘predatory’ journals to refer to journals (and their publishers) that exist for the sole purpose of making profit.

In his first major publication on the topic published in Nature in 2012, Beall provided a first description of what is meant by predatory publishing:

Then came predatory publishers, which publish counterfeit journals to exploit the open-access model in which the author pays. These predatory publishers are dishonest and lack transparency. They aim to dupe researchers, especially those inexperienced in scholarly communication. They set up websites that closely resemble those of legitimate online publishers, and publish journals of questionable and downright low quality. Many purport to be headquartered in the United States, United Kingdom, Canada or Australia but really hail from Pakistan, India or Nigeria. Some predatory publishers spam researchers, soliciting manuscripts but failing to mention the required author fee.

Beall uses the term ‘predatory’ to refer to journals that ‘prey’ on (often unsuspecting and often young) scholars to submit their manuscripts for the sole purpose of making money from these scholars. In this process, normal good editorial and review processes are violated or suspended.

DOWNLOAD THE FULL ARTICLE HERE (PDF 0.5MB)

2021 SAIMM Annual Report and Proceedings

The 2021 SAIMM Annual Report and Proceedings have been published and can be downloaded:

DOWNLOAD (PDF 4MB)

SAIMM President Isabel Geldenhuys talks to Mining Weekly

South Africa on verge of nice breakthroughs in hydrogen, says new SAIMM president
17th August 2021
By Martin Creamer

Speaking to Mining Weekly in a Zoom interview, Geldenhuys expressed the view that all the big mines with big moving machinery will have the opportunity to move away from diesel and switch to a hydrogen-based fuel system because of the contained ecosystem. While the use of green hydrogen is always first prize, Geldenhuys pointed out that many processes have grey hydrogen as a byproduct and expressed the view that where grey hydrogen is at the ready, it should be used as an imperfect solution rather than being left to go to waste.

She said that South Africa had the required hydrogen know-how as a consequence of the Department of Science and Innovation having supported the hydrogen economy concept for nearly 20 years. “What really excites me is the focus on being greener and more efficient," Geldenhuys said. On the multidisciplinary front, she said: "There are many opportunities for us to work together and bring interesting, transdisciplinary thinking into metallurgy to solve our big problems.” Under her leadership, the SAIMM plans to strengthen its online presence so that it can communicate optimally with the rest of the mining and metallurgy world at a time of rising mining fortunes. South Africa’s mining and metallurgy history extends across more than a century, which has resulted in a wealth of knowledge being accessible from SAIMM’s databases.

Read the full article on miningweekly.com