Comments: JPT's Valuable Volunteers
Authors: Donnelly John 
Published: February 2015

Editor's column
SPE's primary mission is to collect, disseminate, and exchange technical information valuable to the industry and to its practitioners. In addition to meetings, workshops, and the Internet, publications are a primary vehicle for transmitting that knowledge.
When JPT published its first issue in 1949, it was the main way of communicating upstream information to members of what was then called the Petroleum Branch of the American Institute of Mining, Metallurgical, and Petroleum Engineers (which would become SPE less than a decade later). The society's first technical journal, SPE Journal, followed in 1961, giving members another resource for publishing and learning. This new technical journal contained peer-reviewed papers that were considered significant but perhaps did not have as broad appeal among members as other papers published in JPT.
Soon other technical journals, each covering their own technical specialty, followed. Although the circulation of SPE's technical journals is smaller than JPT, which is distributed to all SPE members, they remain an important cornerstone of SPE's mission of producing valuable literature. (More information on SPE's technical journals can be found under Papers/Publications/Authors on www.spe.org.)
That distinction between highly technical, peer-reviewed papers and the more general technical information published by JPT continues today. As with much of what the society does, the quality of JPT would not be the same without the work of member volunteers. The technical papers summarized each month in JPT are chosen by members of the JPT Editorial Committee—they review scores of papers presented at SPE conferences, selecting the best for publication. The committee is made up of upstream professionals representing national oil companies, operators, service companies, and academia. They lend their expertise in their specialty to ensure that JPT is publishing the best, most interesting, and most cutting-edge technology in its pages. In 2007, the committee reviewed more than 3,000 papers, choosing 118 to be summarized in the magazine. You can find a list of members of the editorial committee in each issue of JPT and the list with their photos at JPT Online at www.spe.org/jpt.
JPT will continue this year its practice of publishing summaries of the technical papers while putting the entire papers online free for member download for 2 months. This was a compromise reached several years ago to satisfy members who desired the full-length papers and those who wanted a wider range of technical coverage published in each issue. Reader surveys show that members overwhelmingly approve this method. Those surveys also show that the technical paper summaries are among the most popular features of the magazine. And that stands to reason, because the lifeblood of JPT is technology, including the latest information, trends, and case studies that help members succeed in their jobs.
Papers under the heading of three major technical topics are included in each month's JPT. This year, for the first time, JPT will begin including a fourth technical topic in some issues, reflecting the growing number of technical papers and the increasing diversity of the society's technical scope. This past year, the technical topics that had the most papers in their category were enhanced and improved oil recovery, production operations, reservoir simulation and visualization, and drilling and cementing technology.