Nick Boross-Toby
Director of Marketing, The Physiological Society

https://doi.org/10.36866/pn.96.20

Our regular attendance at EB as a formal guest society of the American Physiological Society (APS) continued in 2014 when we returned to sunny San Diego to promote The Society and its journals. Our partnership with the APS has flourished over the last few years, not least illustrated by the new OA journal, Physiological Reports, which has had such a successful start in its first year.

Philip Wright, Mike Shipston (then Chairman of Publications Committee), David Wyllie (then Meetings Secretary) and I met with the APS Council to give an overview of The Society’s 2014–18 Forward Plan. This engendered much discussion and further areas of collaboration are being identified, including establishing a joint Data Working Group to support the activities of our journals.

David Wyllie and I also presented a formal proposal to make Physiology 2016 a joint endeavour with APS in Dublin. There was great enthusiasm and support for the proposal so stay tuned for further details over the coming weeks.

Our stand in the exhibiting hall was as busy as ever with over 500 visitors. The Society also sponsored two symposia during the meeting. Professor Carel le Roux organised the first, reviews of which will be published in Experimental Physiology, on Physiological and pathophysiological signalling between the gut and the kidney: role in diabetic kidney disease. The Journal of Physiology will be publishing reviews of the second, jointly organised by Professors David Paterson and Julian Paton and entitled Insights gleaned from pharmaco-genetic dissection and modelling of cardio-respiratory neural networks.

All three journals held constructive meetings of their editorial teams, chaired by the respective Editors-in-Chief. Simon Rallison, Director of Publications, took the opportunity of comparing notes with the other societies and publishers exhibiting journals at the conference; an informal but useful exercise in benchmarking journal performance and picking up new ideas.

We bid a fond farewell to Professor Ron Lynch (University of Arizona), Chair of the APS Joint Programme Committee (JPC) and welcomed the new Chair, Professor Robert Hester (University of Mississippi). The JPC is responsible for developing and ensuring the scientific integrity of the APS’s EB programme, no small feat given the size and complexity of this meeting.

This year also saw the end of Professor Kim Barrett’s (UCSD) tenure as APS President and the beginning of the Presidency of Professor David Pollock (University of Alabama at Birmingham). The Society would like to thank Kim for her continued support of our partnership and we look forward to continued collaborations with the APS under the leadership of the new President. We also congratulate APS President-Elect, Patricia E. Molina (Louisiana St University Health Sciences Center).

Finally, your Director of Marketing made his rock-star debut singing with GI Distress and the Fabulous FASEBettes. If you missed it in 2014, worry not, he will be back next year when EB returns to Boston at the earlier slot of 28 March to 1 April. Society Members benefit from APS Member rates when they register, as we are a designated ‘guest society’. Hope to see you there!