https://doi.org/10.36866/pn.111.5

Introduction to your Editors

Under the new framework for PN, primary responsibility for the content of PN is divided between the Scientific Editor, who curates the academic and physiologically focused pieces, and Managing Editor, who highlights the activities of Society members/staff and oversees overall production of PN. Both work together with the support of the editorial board to produce an exciting issue of PN each quarter.

Keith Siew Scientific Editor
Keith’s first taste of The Society was as a physiology/pharmacology undergrad attending the 2009 Dublin meeting where he sat and read through his first copy of PN. Little did he know that he would eventually become a Council Affiliate Representative, serve on numerous committees, get on the PN Editorial Board and eventually become its youngest Scientific Editor. This all happened whilst attempting to finish an MSc in imaging, and PhD in medicine and start an international postdoctoral fellowship pursuing his passion for renal physiology and technological innovation.
It is his hope to strengthen and modernise PN and give back to a Society which has given him so much.

Julia Turan Managing Editor
Julia triturated, pipetted, imaged, and analyzed, during her undergrad years studying neurobiology. Since then, she has shifted into the world of science communications, hoping to promote a language of science legible to all. She completed her MSc in Science Communication and Public Engagement at the University of Edinburgh.

In Spring of 1992, The Physiological Society Newsletter began an experiment. The scope of the Newsletter was to be expanded to include a broad range of articles on physiology, the activities of our members and political commentary of the academic scene. The result of this experiment was the eventual transmutation of a Newsletter into a Magazine and establishment of the rechristened Physiology News (PN) as a cornerstone of our community.

Physiology News is your magazine: it should reflect your diversity, satisfy your broad interests, celebrate your achievements and commemorate those no longer with us. Having thrived through several redesigns, relaunches and now ‘under new management’, the magazine at its heart has, and always will be, for the membership by the membership! However, as The Society continues to grow and the way we consume information changes, PN must also evolve to keep pace with a modern world.

The development of the new Society website, presents us with an opportunity to revamp PN, offering both old and new articles in dual format (webpage and hardcopy/PDF), improving shareability and searchability of content, as well as opening up the potential for supplementing the traditional hardcopy with embedded multimedia content (i.e. short videos and audio clips of authors and their work).

It is more important now than ever to not just simply be aware of, but to actually deliver on our environmental and social responsibilities. Going forward, The Society must lead by example, be that on position statements of best practice for data in research and publication (pg 16), or by printing on FSC-certified paper and shipping printed materials in potato starch-based plastic alternative packaging, like this and subsequent issues of PN.

Another key issue of our time is representation; simply put it matters! Our Society and discipline is diverse, and it was important for us to appoint a PN Editorial Board that not only reflected this diversity in terms of background knowledge but also gender, geography, career type and stage
(pg 8-9).

Similarly, this issue of PN is no less diverse, with an article exploring the neuromuscular consequences of ageing that we all must face (pg 32-35), reminders of the lessons that can be learned from comparative physiology (pg 29-31) or those giving us rare insight into the real stories behind the research papers (pg 24-28). PN also serves as a place for us to challenge the status quo, with an article from our former Editor Bill Winlow on the propagation of the action potential (pg 38-42), and to make calls to arms, like our education and teaching theme leads identifying the salient issues in higher education (pg 36-37), innovations in education technology with 3D and virtual reality (pg 43) or the importance of starting healthy lifestyle education young (pg 46-47).

Another important function of PN is to provide an outlet for our members to express themselves. Thanks in large part to the previous editor, Roger Thomas, Letters to the Editor have seen a resurgence. We believe they are a healthy forum for discourse and provide a rare uncensored platform for one to pose questions or draw attention to that not often given the spotlight (Letter from Lamarck; pg 6-7). It is our hope that this tradition continues to live on during under our tenure, and we welcome your ideas and stories, so get in touch with pitches, as well as feedback about the magazine, at magazine@physoc.org

Finally, we’d like to thank Austin Elliott, who steps down at this year’s AGM, for his service on the board since 2015.