Austin Elliott
Former PN Editor

https://doi.org/10.36866/pn.100.6a

It is quite something seeing Physiology News reach its hundredth issue, especially when you’ve been involved in producing rather a lot of them. Fascinating to look back on the change from a photocopied newsletter, to a newsletter with a cover page, to a bigger magazine, and then through several revamps, the latest coming in Spring 2012. It is also – I think – amazing to see what a bunch of mildly-crazed enthusiasts can do, given a common purpose and a little bit of a budget. For those interested in the older history of the magazine, and its origins in the Society’s newsletter -see the current Editor’s article on page 11 – there is an article covering this topic at some length in PN54 (p30-p32). You can read contributions from many previous Editors there.

My own editorial involvement with PN began when I joined Bill Winlow’s new Editorial Group in Autumn 1998, preparing for the Spring 1999 issue (PN34 – I had to write a Science News & Views piece, as we didn’t have any others to go in).  It finished, much later, when  I ended eight years in the Editor’s chair by penning my farewell  ‘Letter to the Next Editor’ in the Winter 2011 issue (Editorial, PN 85), before handing over to Mike Collis. That makes 51 issues, or just over half the magazine’s life. It also means thirteen years of editorial meetings, possibly explaining the chronic meeting-phobia I now have. More seriously, of all the ‘committee’ meetings that being an academic scientist has involved me in, those for the magazine were by a long distance the most enjoyable – see ‘enthusiasts’, above.

Whilst the appearance of PN offers a visual record of the magazine’s evolution, it is content that really gets editors excited. As PN grew under its various editors, it added content, and features – to my mind the lifeblood of a successful magazine. Publishing interesting stuff, and stuff that people want to read, must be what it’s about, together with things that get people to think, to discuss, to agree and disagree. ‘If everyone likes everything you’re running, then you’re doing it wrong’ is the sort of thing I might well have declaimed at an Editorial Group meeting.  There are many issues facing physiology, and the other sciences; where better to air them than in PN?  And in case you hadn’t noticed, that was a call on the readers as well as the editors.

Anyway, here’s to many more issues of PN under the new Editorial team and those who follow it. Long, as they say, may it continue.