From the President
Welcome to the October issue of Microbiology Today . I want to start by thanking the members of Protistology-UK ( protistology.org.uk ) who have been heavily involved in the production of this issue. This Learned Society (formerly the British Society for Protist Biology) is a membership organisation for scientists and amateurs interested in all areas of protistology, from ecological to medical and from sub-cellular to population studies.
T he Society primarily exists to support and promote protistan research and teaching in the UK, but a key aim is to encourage the development of young scientists. The organisation hosts two scientific meetings a year and provides bursaries for student attendance together with prizes for student presentations. Membership of Protistology-UK is a benefit of Microbiology Society membership – just head to the ‘Update details’ section when you log in and select ‘I would like to be a member of Protistology UK’ under the ‘Get involved’ tab. This is the second Microbiology Today issue of 2022 and my second issue as President of the Microbiology Society. As we come to the final months of the year, I would like to thank all the members who have participated in Society activities and attended events during 2022 – it has been a great pleasure to meet so many of you in my first year as President, and I look forward to opportunities still to come. At our Annual General Meeting in September, we launched the Society’s ambitious new strategy, which lays out our vision, mission and values and will guide our work. In the five years between 2023 and 2027, the Society’s principal goal is to strengthen our culture of being a community-driven Society by amplifying our members’ voices, wherever they are in the world, and empowering them to embed the benefits of microbiology within wider society. The period of the strategy will undoubtedly bring new opportunities and great change for the Society. We will gain a better understanding of the diversity of our members; we will harness local knowledge for worldwide impact; and we will recognise global differences in accessing opportunities. To achieve our ambition, we rely on your ongoing support. In January, our founding journal, Microbiology
( mic.microbiologyresearch.org ), will transition to fully Open Access, the first of the journals in our portfolio to do so. We are doing this because of the benefits Open Access brings to our membership, all microbiologists and those with an interest in microbiology. The world is entering a new era of open science, challenging the status quo by recognising the value of greater transparency and focusing on reproducibility, data management, collaboration and good scientific citizenship. At the Microbiology Society, we embrace these changes and recognise the positive impact they represent for our community, for the scientific endeavour and for society’s understanding of pressing global challenges. We cannot achieve this major change without your support; if you publish one article with us you are benefiting your community. Ask your institution to sign up to our Publish and Read model to give your work a chance to really make a difference – when you publish Open Access with us, your articles will have a greater reach and impact. You can read more about Publish and Read on our journal platform ( microbiologyresearch.org/ publish-and-read ). As always, we are incredibly grateful to all the members who submit to our journals and to those who give up their time to so enthusiastically get involved in everything we do, by joining Committees, Divisions, Panels, Working Groups and by becoming Champions. Thank you all, and I look forward to meeting and hearing from more of you during the remainder of the year and in 2023.
Gurdyal Besra President
president@microbiologysociety.org
65 Microbiology Today October 2022 | microbiologysociety.org
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