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I thank the members of APS for the
honor and privilege of serving as your 77th President. Like many others, I
am indebted to the Society for providing a professional home that has
helped to nurture and shape my career as a physiologist. My membership in
the APS began shortly after earning my PhD degree and soon thereafter I
had an opportunity to become a more active participant in the Society by
serving on one of its many committees (Membership). As my involvement in
the APS increased over the years, I gained more insight into its diverse
programs and developed an appreciation for the unwavering resolve of the
APS to transform itself from a good to a great scientific organization.
This was particularly evident when I served on the APS Council about a
decade ago. Upon returning to the Council meetings over the past year, I
was greeted by some familiar faces and struck by the realization that many
of the issues (e.g., publications, meetings, the animal rights movement)
that were hotly debated by Council a decade ago remain a source of
discussion today. This is not entirely unexpected in view of the fact that
these very issues represent the engines that drive the organization
towards a mission stated by our progenitors as “to promote the advance of
Physiology and to facilitate the personal intercourse between
Physiologists.” The challenges of and threats to this mission have not
changed significantly since the APS was in its infancy; the
challenges/threats are merely manifested differently and are largely
reflective of evolving societal values, government policies and
technological developments. Hence, while the problems remain largely the
same today, they certainly appear more complex and require solutions that
are in keeping with the times.
The effectiveness of our organization in dealing with the
evolving challenges and threats within the biomedical community has earned
the APS a reputation for leadership and vision. We have been fortunate to
have great leaders who helped shape the vision for our future as
physiologists and for our Society. The 76 past presidents of the Society
have distinguished themselves as selfless leaders who had the professional
will to serve as catalysts for change within an organization that is
largely responsible for defining the role of physiologists in modern
science. Much of the credit for this organization’s success also goes to
the 72 full-time staff that work each day to execute the vision and
implement the programs and policies of Council and the Executive
Committee. Martin Frank has instituted highly effective management
practices within the organization and he remains a valued source of
innovation and vision for Council. Marty clearly has a knack for
identifying talent, as evidenced by his outstanding team of department
managers, including Linda Allen (Meetings & Membership), Marsha Matyas
(Education) Robert Price (Business), Alice Ra’anan (Public Affairs),
Margaret Reich (Publications), and Sue Sabur (Marketing). The exceptional
talent of this administrative team and their dedication to meeting the
organization’s goals and aspirations support the new management principle
that “people are not your most important asset. The right people are.” (3)
One of my first responsibilities as President is to address
some of the major challenges presently facing the Society and to summarize
how I plan to shape the agenda in the coming year to deal with these
challenges. My predecessors have provided insightful commentary and unique
perspectives about many of the issues that have dominated the agenda of
the APS Council in recent history. I am not able to weigh-in on all of
these issues, so I have chosen to focus on those matters that warrant some
consideration in the coming year.
Strategic Planning
Historically, the APS has made an effort to promote and
encourage the participation of its members in developing a vision for the
future of the organization. Members have availed themselves of this
opportunity through their Sections and/or through service on Society
committees. For many years, planning for the APS was a loosely structured
process that was slow to affect major change within the organization. In
1992, the APS held its first strategic planning meeting, the results of
which have had a profound effect on the organization’s ability to set both
short- and long-term goals, to implement new programs (or modify existing
ones), and most importantly, to monitor progress towards achieving those
goals. A similar strategic planning effort was undertaken in 2000 and it
resulted in an equally impressive outline of goals, objectives and action
items that guide the current efforts of the APS (1). Recognizing the
immense impact that strategic planning has had on our organization, and
the ability of changing opportunities and challenges to render such plans
dated or obsolete, recent presidents have emphasized the need to continue
strategic planning on an ongoing basis (5, 6, 9). Accordingly, John
Williams has called for the next planning meeting to be held in 2005.
An instrument that has proven invaluable in providing input
from as many APS members as possible in the strategic planning process is
the member needs survey. The survey was originally designed in 1996 to
define the needs of members and to determine whether the Society’s various
programs are meeting those needs. The member input provided by the first
survey was invaluable in the 2000 strategic planning effort, providing
quantitative and qualitative data related to member satisfaction and
perceived deficiencies in core APS program areas such as scientific
meetings, publications, public affairs and education. Stratification of
the data according to a variety of demographic factors, including
respondent age, gender, professional degree, work environment, APS Section
affiliation, etc., allows for an assessment of need for different groups
within the Society. The APS staff is working to update the member needs
survey in anticipation of the 2005 Strategic Planning meeting. Input on
the survey has been solicited from a review group consisting of three
members of Council and three members of the Section Advisory Committee.
The web-based survey is scheduled for completion in the spring of 2004 and
will be distributed to the entire membership shortly thereafter so that
the data can be processed and evaluated in time for the Strategic Planning
meeting. Given the importance of the information gleaned from this survey,
I strongly encourage our members to take this opportunity to make a
contribution to the long-range planning process by completing the survey.
This will enable the Society to be responsive to your needs and to fulfill
your expectations of the organization.
Publications
The APS journals program, with its present portfolio of 14
journals, has enjoyed a long history of excellence and innovation. A
number of indicators of journal quality (impact factor), production
efficiency (time to print) and interest by authors (manuscript
submissions) and readers (hits on website) confirm the continuing success
of the publications program. While much concern has been raised about the
impact factor for the American Journal of Physiology (AJP) journals, the
latest values for this arguably flawed measure of journal popularity
places the AJP section journals in the top 10% of all biological journals.
Manuscript submissions in the previous year have increased by eight per
cent across all APS journals and the time to print publication (from
manuscript acceptance to appearance in print) is down to about three and a
half months. The transition to electronic publishing has gone very
smoothly and the impact of having our journals online is exemplified by
the fact that the publications component of the APS website received over
35 million hits last year.
NIPS, which has been a valuable source for short
review articles for physiologists and their trainees for nearly 20 years,
is changing its name and getting a face-lift. Walter Boron, the new
Editor-in-Chief of NIPS and his editorial board have proposed (with the
approval of APS and IUPS Councils) a change in title of NIPS to
Physiology. The new title more aptly conveys the fact that the journal
relates to the discipline of physiology and this change alone may draw
more readers to the journal. In addition, Physiology, the main body of
which will still contain short review-type articles, will also include
several new features such as culled abstracts from other important papers,
short articles on emerging topics and technologies, reviews of websites
and occasional historical perspectives. The new look and content of the
journal should broaden the appeal of this valuable component of our
publications portfolio. The success of the transformed journal and impact
of these changes on the appeal and popularity of Physiology are worth
following since it may foretell a need to change the way we “package” our
other APS journals in order to maintain their competitiveness in the field
of science.
An important product of the immense success of our publications program is
revenue. Indeed, journals have been the major source of revenue for the
APS since 1914 when the Society assumed ownership and management of the
American Journal of Physiology from its founder, William Townsend Porter.
Within a year of its acquisition, the journal generated a surplus of
$2,565.76 for the APS (2), which represents in today’s dollars (adjusted
for inflation) a sum of about $45,000. In 1995, the APS Council mandated
that the journals program show a profit margin of 10%. This past year, the
income from APS journals totaled approximately $13 million, with operating
net revenue of about $1.2 million. These additional funds generated by APS
publications are used to support a variety of other programs and
activities of the Society. The heavy reliance of the APS on publications
revenue distinguishes it from other organizations that rely nearly equally
on revenue generated from its annual meetings and its publications
program. For example, the ASCB generates about 35% of its total revenue
each year from publications and meetings, while in the Society for
Neuroscience, journal revenue accounts for 25% and its meetings for 45% of
total revenue (7). A similar distribution of revenue is reported for FASEB.
For the APS, meetings represent less than five per cent while publications
account for about 85% of the total revenue. This comparative analysis of
revenue streams indicates that the health and vigor of the APS is more
dependent on the financial success of our publications program than some
other scientific organizations and that any threat to this program
represents a serious threat to the Society as a whole.
The national and international movement to adopt the concept
of open (free) access for online professional publishing may well
represent a fundamental threat to the fiscal stability of the Society.
This movement is said to have resulted from the rapidly escalating costs
of subscriptions to many leading journals produced by for-profit
publishers and a desire to provide the general public with free access to
scientific reports that were funded by the tax paying public. This issue
is gaining much attention in the scientific community and in the lay
press. The movement appears to be gaining some traction as evidenced by
the introduction of legislation in Congress that would eliminate copyright
protection from research funded by the federal government, and the
successful efforts of the Public Library of Science (PLoS) to gain the
support of a number of scientific organizations and institutions. Some
publishers (e.g., Oxford University Press) have announced that they will
be experimenting with the open access (author-pays) model as an option for
authors in the near future. The APS and FASEB have actively opposed this
legislation and the two organizations have staked a position in opposition
to the PLoS initiative. The APS journals meet the objectives of the open
access model (i.e., available free online to all interested parties)
within one year after the articles are available to subscribers. This
commitment to innovative and independent publishing practices and to the
wide dissemination of information contained in our journals is evidenced
by our leadership role in drafting the “DC Principles,” which has been
signed by more than 45 other not-for-profit publishers representing over
110 journals. In collaboration with Stanford University’s HighWire Press,
the DC Principles signatories have worked to transform their print
journals to online journals that allow the scientific community and the
public easy access to nearly 700,000 free full-text articles and the
abstracts of over 14 million articles in more than 4,500 Medline journals.
In addition to copyright ownership, an important economic
issue related to the concept of open access publishing is the proposed
transfer of costs for publications from subscribers to authors. The
advocates for open access publishing contend that this new business model
would enable researchers living and working in developing countries to
have access to the information generated by scientists in wealthy nations.
(In reality, the APS and many other not-for-profit publishers have
traditionally sent print versions of their journals without charge to
institutional libraries in developing countries. As these institutions
gain internet connectivity, free online subscriptions are being provided.)
However, little attention has been devoted to the issue of how scientists
in these developing nations as well as investigators in Europe, Latin
American, and Asia will obtain the funds necessary to publish their own
work. In the United Kingdom, for example, federally funded grants cannot
be used to pay for publications costs. PLoS projects the cost of
publishing an open access article to fall in the range of $1,000 to
$2,000, but the actual cost projected for publishing such an article in
APS journals is somewhat higher. For example, the estimated cost to
authors for the average length (10 pages) article published online only
(no print version) would range between $1,700 for Advances in Physiology
Education, $2,500 for American Journal of Physiology and $3,700 for
Physiological Genomics, with 15–25% higher costs projected for the online
plus print version of the same articles. These estimates do not include
the 10% profit margin currently expected of APS publications.
The present business model used by the APS shares the costs of publication
between the authors (page charges, submission fee) and the subscribers.
The open access model assigns the cost of publishing entirely to authors
and/or through a fee paid by the authors’ institution. Other approaches to
covering publication costs have also been proposed, including a
“micro-payment system for a pay-per view or electronic reprint
order/download (two to three dollars)” (4). The APS recently initiated an
experiment to determine the level of interest of authors who wish to pay a
fee ($1,500) to provide free online access to their article (in
Physiological Genomics) at the time of publication. The response, thus
far, has been modest (<15%) but the initial results demonstrate a
willingness of some authors to pay for immediate free access to their
published work. Whether authors would continue to choose this option if
they had to pay the actual cost of publishing their article (e.g., $3,700
for Physiological Genomics) is not clear, but it appears unlikely. While
it remains uncertain whether (and to what extent) the APS will have to
modify its business plan to cover the costs of publishing its journals in
the coming years, this looming potential threat to the major revenue
stream for the APS suggests that we should work towards reducing our heavy
dependence on profits from publications to support the many programs and
activities of the Society.
Scientific meetings
The structure and quality of the annual APS meeting that is
part of Experimental Biology (EB) has been a source of much discussion,
anxiety and concern for Council and the membership in general. EB remains
one of my very favorite scientific meetings and I have missed this meeting
only once over the past 25 years. The diverse programming that is afforded
by a yearly meeting with other member- and guest-societies of FASEB
provides a unique opportunity, at a single venue, to fuel my own diverse
research interests, which include the microcirculation, oxidative stress,
inflammation, and ischemia-reperfusion injury. While the small specialty
meetings are ideal for immersion in single topic issues, the larger
multidisciplinary meetings have a greater potential to produce an
environment that allows for integration of information gained at the
molecular, cellular, organ and whole animal levels. Recent efforts to
restructure the APS component of the EB meeting have focused on creating a
feel for both types of meetings in a single venue. Indeed, the programming
of EB has changed rather remarkably over recent years, with the addition
of the “meeting within a meeting” format (Physiology InFocus), Section
named lectureships, and more symposia, including those dealing with
translational research. These efforts to improve and extend APS
programming at the EB meeting have made it an even more attractive
meeting. Nonetheless, there is a lingering view that the EB meeting does
not generate the same level of interest by APS members as in years past
and that the scientific quality of the meeting does not measure-up to that
of other large scientific meetings that are primarily focused on a single
organ system, e.g., American Heart Association (AHA) Scientific Sessions,
Digestive Diseases Week (DDW), American Society of Nephrology (ASN).
Attendance records for 1992 to 2000 indicate in most (six of
nine) years, 17-19% (representing 1,200 to 1,670 individuals) of the APS
membership participated in EB meetings. These numbers are quite similar to
the statistics for the EB meeting held in 1983, where 1,534 members (25%
of APS membership) attended. In the 2002 and 2003 EB meetings, APS member
attendance exceeded 2,000 (2,485 & 2,133) and reflected 23% and 19% of
Society membership, respectively. The data indicate that membership
participation in the annual Society meeting has remained relatively
constant at roughly 20% over the past two decades, with the substantial
(80%) increase in Society membership over this same period resulting in a
meaningful increase (>2,000 participants) in the actual number of APS
members participating in EB.
It remains unclear, however, why only one-fifth of the APS
membership chooses to attend our annual meeting each year and whether it
is realistic to expect a much larger fraction of the membership to attend
in the future. The attendance of APS members at EB compares favorably with
other FASEB organizations. For example, the American Society for
Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics (ASPET) estimates that about
17% of its members have attended its annual meeting over the past few
years, while attendance by the American Association of Immunologists (AAI)
membership ranges between 16 and 24%, regardless of whether the AAI holds
it annual meeting with or separate from EB. The APS should continue with
its recent efforts to experiment with novel programming strategies that
focus on timely topics with broad appeal to the membership. We should also
consider actively recruiting additional guest societies that are willing
to meet with us at EB on a periodic basis. This would expose other
researchers to our annual meeting and let them know what our meeting has
to offer. We should also work harder to improve the prestige of the EB
meeting, particularly for our trainees and junior faculty. This is best
achieved by enhancing the quality of the science presented at the meeting,
not only in symposia and named lectureships, but also in the free (poster
and oral) communications. High quality science appears at all levels of
programming in the most prestigious meetings. While the existing portfolio
of Society- and Section-based awards for outstanding abstracts and
presentations certainly helps to promote the submission of quality work by
our trainees, more should be done to recognize research excellence in the
free communications presented at our annual meeting. The prestigious AHA,
ASN and DDW meetings use a peer review process to evaluate and stratify
the submitted abstracts based on scientific merit. Such competition for a
slot in the program and for recognition in the form of an oral
communication fosters the practice of submitting one’s best work to these
meetings. While the long-held tradition of allowing all submitted APS
abstracts to appear on the EB program should be continued, we should
consider instituting an evaluation process that enables the Sections to
identify and recognize more of the top submitted abstracts and then to
highlight these submissions more effectively in the program, either by
designating these as oral presentations or as “posters of distinction.” If
improving the prestige of the EB meeting is an important goal for the
Society, then we should be prepared to adopt such a major change in our
philosophy about free communications in order to achieve that goal.
The Joint Program Committee has put together an outstanding
program for EB’04 and most of the planning for 2005 is already complete.
In 2005, the XXXVth International Union of Physiological Sciences (IUPS)
will be held (March 31 to April 5) in parallel with EB (April 2-6) in San
Diego, CA. The IUPS was last held in the US in 1968. In addition to the
normal elements of an EB meeting (e.g., Distinguished Lectures, symposia,
featured topics and workshops) there will be several satellite meetings
held in proximity to San Diego. The IUPS Congress will increase the
participation of foreign scientists on the EB program and will provide an
opportunity for the APS to showcase the EB meeting to physiologists who do
not ordinarily attend our meetings. I look forward to a record
attendance/participation of the APS membership in what should prove to be
an outstanding IUPS Congress and EB meeting.
In 1991, the APS began an effort to provide its membership
with a series of conferences that focus on specialty topics related to the
discipline of physiology. Council originally approved the sponsorship of
two APS Conferences per year and it has recently indicated an interest in
increasing the number to four per year. Several outstanding specialty
meetings have been developed through this program, with one new conference
scheduled for 2004 that will focus on translational research related to
mechanisms underlying the pathogenesis of inflammatory bowel disease.
Despite the rather generous support provided by the APS to organizers of
these conferences, which includes $25,000 and a highly qualified and
experienced conference planning staff, the number of meeting proposals
received by the JPC has been low (one to three per year). The FASEB Summer
Research Conferences typically receive between 30 and 38 proposals each
year and they offer a less competitive financial package for the
Conference organizers ($9,000). With the large number of other conferences
(Gordon Research, Keystone) that are also available to the biomedical
research community, perhaps the supply now matches or exceeds the demand
for new meetings of this type. Alternatively, interest in the APS
Conferences to date may reflect the aggressiveness of our pursuit of
competitive conference proposals. The FASEB Summer Conferences has a
standing committee that is devoted entirely to the identification of new
conference topics as well as the recruitment and evaluation of conference
proposals. The APS may benefit from adopting a similar strategy to
increase the visibility of our Conferences program and to generate
additional proposals for an APS Conference. In addition to providing a
large number of premier specialty meetings that bear on the discipline of
physiology, a robust APS Conferences program has the potential to create
another important revenue stream for the Society. The FASEB Summer
Research Conferences, for example, generated in excess of $250,000 of net
revenue in 2003 and project this revenue to exceed $400,000 in 2004.
Public Affairs
Advocacy for biomedical research and education is a vital
role of the APS. The Society’s public affairs activities are continuous
and varied. The APS continues to take a leadership role in FASEB on animal
issues, with one of our most recent efforts directed towards endorsing a
legal strategy to counter a movement by animal activists to promote the
concept of “personhood” via the judicial system. Inasmuch as animal
activists have made little headway in affecting change via the legislative
process, the likely battleground of the future between the biomedical
community and animal activists is the courts. The APS remains committed to
the use of its resources to oppose the effort by animal activists to
deprive society of the many advances in health care that result from
research on animals.
With the end of the doubling of the NIH budget and the new
era of reduced federal spending on biomedical research, advocacy for
increased NIH funding will remain a high priority for the APS in the
coming year. There appears to be a growing sentiment in Congress that
evidence for a substantial return on the recent large investment in NIH is
needed before double-digit increases are again realized. Furthermore,
Congress is directing much of the small increase in the total NIH budget
towards new public health priorities, such as bioterrorism defense and
emerging diseases (e.g., SARS, West Nile Virus). The Society, working with
FASEB, will need to convince legislators that much has been accomplished
as a result of the budget-doubling effort and that progress made from this
investment will be lost without additional funding. However, in order to
influence Congress on this issue, the membership must take an active role
by writing to their elected officials in the House and Senate to request
support for increased NIH funding. The Legislative Action Center of the
APS website (http://www.the-aps.org/pa/action/)
provides useful information about the status of the Federal budget process
and tips about how to communicate with Congress on this issue.
Education
The emphasis placed on education by the APS is unique within
the community of scientific societies. The Education Department of the APS
is actively involved in a variety of activities that facilitate the
teaching endeavors of our members, expose students at all educational
levels to career opportunities in biomedical research, promotes the
participation of minority members and women in the Society, and increases
public awareness of the ethical use of animals in research, as well as
advancements in health care that are a result of physiological research.
The APS has received preliminary notification that it will be recognized
for its efforts in the education arena by a Presidential Award for
Excellence in Mentoring. The innovative nature of the education programs
developed and administered by the APS has resulted in competitive
applications for Federal grants that help to support some of these
efforts. In order to ensure continued and expanded funding of this
outstanding education program, we should explore other opportunities for
support from Federal agencies and private foundations.
In recent years, education-related activities have provided an interface
for interaction between the APS and the Association of Chairs of
Departments of Physiology (ACDP). This fruitful collaboration has resulted
in the production of a set of learning objectives for medical physiology
courses, and the development of a professional skills document for
graduate students and postdoctoral fellows, which is now available on our
website (http://www.the-aps.org/education/
MedPhysObj/medcor.htm). Efforts are also underway to work with the
ACDP to promote and facilitate the development of more undergraduate
programs in physiology. Future potential avenues for collaboration between
the two organizations should be explored and might focus on efforts to
increase the visibility of physiology as a career choice for
undergraduates with the ultimate goal of increasing the pool of applicants
in physiology graduate programs. There may be some urgency to this issue
since it was recently reported that the number of doctoral degrees awarded
in physiology between 1993 and 2002 fell by 24%, while PhD degrees granted
in other biomedical disciplines fell to a lesser extent (e.g.,
Pharmacology by three per cent and Microbiology by 12%) or increased
(e.g., 78% for Neurosciences and six per cent for Molecular biology) (8).
A well-conceived and executed effort to grow the next generation of
physiologists is vital to the health and vitality of both the APS and the
ACDP.
Closing
It’s an exciting time to be a physiologist and to be part of
an organization that has so effectively represented the discipline of
physiology. The APS has developed into one of the premier scientific
organizations because of the willingness of its leadership and membership
to affect change in the goals and programs of the Society as the needs
and/or opportunities arise. A growing membership, an outstanding staff,
financial stability, and a number of highly successful programs justify
optimism for the future of this vibrant organization. While there are
existing threats to the health and vigor of the Society, we are
well-positioned to respond to, and create opportunities from, these
challenges. The upcoming strategic planning effort will afford the
membership the opportunity to weigh-in on issues that relate to the
effectiveness of the Society in representing and nurturing the discipline
of physiology. Your input is important, so please participate in this
process. My goal during the coming year and in the strategic planning
process is to focus some of the debate on 1) the threat to the financial
stability of the Society posed by open access publishing and the need to
lessen the Society’s dependence on revenue from the publications program;
2) affecting change in the Society’s annual meeting to recognize
excellence in the free communications, and to enhance the overall prestige
of the meeting; 3) increasing the participation of the membership in our
advocacy efforts that relate to the funding for research in the
physiological sciences, and 4) developing a strategy to reverse the
progressive decline in the enrollment of PhD students in our physiology
graduate programs. I look forward to hearing from the membership about how
we might best achieve these objectives.
Acknowledgements: I would like to acknowledge Aubrey Taylor, Joey Granger,
Matthew Grisham, Tak Yee Aw, Ronald Korthuis, Robert Specian, and Marty
Frank for reading drafts of this article and providing their perspectives
on the issues addressed herein. I am also grateful to Margaret Reich and
Linda Allen for their help in assembling the data presented in the
article.
References
1. Boron, W.F. The APS Strategic Plan – A vision for the New Millenium.
The Physiologist 43:71-74, 2000.
2. Brobeck, J.R., O.E. Reynolds, and T.A. Appel. History of the
American Physiological Society: The First Century, 1887-1987. American
Physiological Society, Bethesda, 1987.
3. Collins, J. Good to Great. Why some companies make the leap…and others
don’t. HarperCollins, New York, 2001.
4. Graczynski, M.R., Moses L. Open access publishing-panacea or Trojan
horse? Med Sci Monit. 10:ED1-3, 2004.
5. Hall, J.E. 74th President of the APS. The Physiologist 44:65,
74-79, 2002.
6. Horwitz, B.A. 75th President of the APS. The Physiologist 45:87;
96-99, 2002.
7. Miller, LP. Open Access: The future of scientific publishing: Negative
implications of the movement on scientific society business models. Talk
from Society of National Association of Publishers, Nov. 2003.
8. What’s Up, Doc? The Scientist 18:43, 2004.
9.Williams, J.A. 76th President of the APS. The Physiologist 46:2,
2003. |
