Dear members and fellow protistologists,
As we end 2024 and begin what will be a turbulent year on all fronts in all regions of the world, 2025 also brings changes in the Society. The most important task last year was renewal of the Society journal contract with Wiley (the publisher), which required a significant time investment from several members both on and off the executive. The new Editor-in-Chief (Joel Dacks) takes his role as Roberto Docampo retired from that position. I thank the Past-President Anna Karnkowska for seeing these through. The other important accomplishment was the overhaul of the by-laws with our Secretary Tomáš Pánek spearheading that effort. Several emerging issues were discussed at the executive meetings, and efforts to address these began but need to be continued.
Annual meetings and conferences
The Society’s annual meeting in Seattle, WA was held jointly with the Phycological Society of America. Attendance was primarily from North America, with very low participation from Europe, Asia, and other regions. In part there are difficulties with visas to the USA for some, but it was an expensive meeting beyond the budget of many laboratories. Discussions that followed proposed an ISOP only meeting as we had not met on our own for some time. The Executive committee is discussing a possibility of organizing such a meeting in 2026, but no decision has been made yet.
Business advisory committee and Treasurer
Our new Treasurer (Ginny Edgcomb) takes over from Joel Dacks and this requires adjustment to the Business Advisory Committee. The composition of the committee is changing, but I am grateful to Michelle Leger who agreed to chair the committee. The executive would benefit from a strategic plan projecting our budget sustainability going forward, with achievable goals on the medium to long term. These goals will need to be coordinated with revenue from memberships, the journal, and the annual conferences.
Affiliate Societies
A complicated fee structure developed over the past ten years with different prices for too many categories of members, fixed to currencies. There have been currency valuation changes, and the fees were no longer making any sense. We proposed reduction of the number of fee categories significantly. Affiliate societies have also been eligible for grants to support their local meetings. The Executive Committee is discussing several models of future collaboration between the Society and Affiliates. The new Vice-President is in communication with affiliate societies as we continue these discussions.
Membership
There are many protistologists around the world but very few are direct members of the Society. With research papers easily available online for free, many choices of journals and conferences available to disseminate work and to interact with colleagues, the roles of discipline-specific professional societies changed. Large societies seem to have done well but those that failed to grow are struggling. The seriousness of the discussion on sustainability and membership numbers cannot be under-stated.
Image repository study group
There are numerous websites, mostly personal ones with more or less public access to the protist images. As individuals retire, the image repositories are archived and become inaccessible. A group is discussing mechanisms to provide better metadata, standardised classification for retrievability, and easier access for using the images.
I wish all of you a fantastic 2025, and looking forward to seeing all those who make it to Seoul.
Cheers, Sina
ISOP President, 2024-25
