Bylaws

Approved 16/9 2022

§ 1

The Scandinavian Physiological Society is a society of researchers from Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden working in the field of physiology and related areas of science. The society is registered in Sweden.

§ 2

The purpose of the Society is to promote and disseminate knowledge of research and to preserve the interests of physiological science in the Nordic countries.

This purpose is forwarded by owning and publishing Acta Physiologica and other scientific journals, by organizing scientific meetings, and awarding travel grants for the free exchange of knowledge, and other activities in agreement with the purpose of the society.

Distribution of profits cannot take place.

§ 3

The Society consists of ordinary members, student members, honorary members and associated members.

Researchers at Nordic universities and colleges working in the area of the Society can gain admission to the Society as ordinary members by applying to the secretary general.

Students working in science subjects may be accepted as student members by applying to the secretary-general after recommendation by their supervisors.

Other persons that show an interest in the Society may be selected as ordinary members through proposal by a member of the Society.

Companies, organizations and persons that wish to support the Society may gain admission as associated members by applying to the secretary general.

Persons who in a significant way promote the activities of the Society may be elected as honorary members. Proposals for selection as honorary member are submitted to the board, which subsequently makes a decision on the matter.

§ 4

All members pay an annual fee, the amount of which is determined by the board. The annual fee for ordinary members may be replaced by a determined one-off payment.

Members may notify the secretary general in writing of their withdrawal. Members that do not pay their annual fee for three consecutive years are considered to have withdrawn from the Society. Lifelong members that have not provided the executive committee a valid contact address for 3 years are considered to have withdrawn from the Society.

§ 5

The board has a maximum of 13 members and consists of the president, the secretary general, the executive officer and two national representative from each of the countries of Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden, and one from Iceland. Each national representative member cannot function for more than two consecutive four-year periods. The national representatives shall be affiliated with an institution located in the respective country. For each national representative a deputy is also appointed.

The first year after a new president has taken office, the past-president serves on the board as past-president. One year before the termination of the presidential period a new president is elected by the general assembly and serves on the board as president elect for one year before taking office as president. During this time the board has 13 voting members.

The board of the Society represents and leads the activities of the Society between the general assemblies.

The president is elected by the general assembly for a period of four years. A new president should come from a different Nordic country than the past president.

A quorum consists of at least 8 present members and at least one national representative from each of three (3) different countries.

The board appoints the chief editors of journals owned by the society. Unless the president or the board decide otherwise, an editor-in-chief has the right to be present at board meetings with the right to submit proposals, but not to vote.

The board may appoint any committee it sees fit.

Board meetings and their minutes are public unless the president or the board decide otherwise for special cases. The board decide in closed session without the member present in cases of potential conflicts of interest.

§ 6

The general meeting of the Society shall take place at least every second year.

Only ordinary members and honorary members that are present have the right to vote at general meetings.

The following items shall be taken up at the ordinary general meeting:

Ia) Election of chairman and secretary for the general meeting.

Ib) The secretary-general shall submit the board`s annual report, with the annual accounts for the time from the preceding general meeting.

Ic) The editor-in-chiefs of journals owned by the society shall submit the report for the journal for the time from the preceding general meeting.

Id) Presentation of the audit report for the Society for the relevant time period.

Ie) Discharge of liability for the board members.

If) Information regarding the financial management and profit of the Acta Physiologica Jubilee fund for the time period from the previous general meeting.

The following items shall be taken up when appropriate according to §5:

IIa) Election of president, general secretary and executive officer.

IIb) Election of national representatives and from each country each with one deputy member to the board.

IIc) Election of two auditors and one deputy auditor, with mandate periods of four years with the option of re-election.

IId) Election of three members from three different countries for an election committee that shall prepare nominations for all elections that take place at the general meeting. Members of the elected election committee shall appoint a chairman to convene their meetings and the mandate period for the election committee is four years between re-elections.

Members of the executive committee may propose any other issue to be voted on by the assembly. The general meeting may issue instructions for the work of the board.

Notice to attend the general meeting shall be sent out at the latest one month before the meeting.

Proposal for other issues to be decided at the general meeting can be proposed by any member and shall be submitted to executive committee at the latest five weeks before the general meeting in which it is desired that the proposal be discussed.

An extra general meeting may be called by the board or the president or when at least 30 members so demand. Notice to attend shall be sent out at the latest 3 months before the meeting.

§ 7

The executive committee consists of the president, the secretary-general and the executive officer. The executive committee shall manage the ongoing activities of the Society. The president and the secretary-general are representatives of the Society and can sign on behalf of the Society. The board may issue instructions for the work of the executive committee.

The executive committee shall appoint (co-)organizers of meetings arranged or co-organized by the society.

§ 8

Unless otherwise stated in the regulations, decisions are made at the general meeting and in the board by straightforward majority. In cases of tied votes in the board, the chairman has the casting vote.

§ 9

Proposals for amendments to these regulations that in turn replace earlier issues from 1969, 1973, 1992, 1994, 1996, 2000, 2001, 2005, 2014, 2015, 2020 and 2022 shall be submitted to the board at the latest two months before the general meeting in which it is desired that the proposal be discussed. In order to be approved at the general meeting, proposals for amendments of the regulations must be included in the notice for attending the general meeting together with comments from the board. The board will present the amendment proposal, with its own comments, to the general meeting. A majority of at least two thirds of votes of the members present at the general meeting is required for the proposal to be adopted.

Decision regarding the dissolution of the Society, or regarding amendments to §2, shall be valid only if approved by a three-quarters majority at two consecutive general assemblies. The decision on dissolution shall state to which organization the Society’s assets shall be transferred, and that organization shall have the primary purpose of promoting physiological sciences.

Collaboration

The Scandinavian Physiological Society best serves its members’ interests and our goal to promote research, interest, and education in various fields of physiology and the related life sciences within the Nordic countriesthrough collaboration with scientists worldwide. Therefore, SPS is an engaged member of IUPS and FEPS and readily collaborates with sister societies outside these organisations.

Scientific meetings

The conditions for in-person scientific meetings have changed considerably over the last few years. Particularly university politics on air travel creates the need for attractive meetings in ground-transportation travel distance. Therefore, the strategy for our annual meetings is to reduce the competition with fellow societies and collaborate on stronger combined annual meetings with a quality that allows comparison to transatlantic endeavours. In this, the SPS Strategy Sep2022-2026 follows the extensive work from previous SPS leadership in laying the ground for this type of meeting with the collaboration on the Europhysiology series. This work has ensured that our fellow societies collaborating on the Europhysiology series are familiar with and accepted the SPS way of SIG-pre-meetings. The overall idea with pre-meetings is to combine the strength of focused meetings with broad meetings for a future strong and reliable meeting culture within the society. The upcoming planned meeting is found here.

Society journals

The publishing scene is experiencing the most drastic changes seen in scientific publishing in a century. We are currently facing a situation where opportunists are financially exploring the positive wave for open access, making very uncertain time for society-owned journals. The society journal stands as a guarantee for high scientific quality and a rigorous peer review – a position thatseems to have resulted in a large drop and unfortunate in submissions to society journals at large. In the current publishing landscape, SPS view other sister society journals as our allies, not as competitors. Therefore, the strategy is to collaborate with other physiological societies that own and publish society journals on a common campaign to support society publishing to secure options for our members to publish in a portfolio of journals with a society quality stamp also in the future.

Teaching physiology

A common denominator for physiologists is that we teach, if not the most – but at least one of the very demanding topics in biologists’ and health professionals’ education. Therefore, teaching physiology is, to a high degree, something that unites society members, and is a pressing argument for broad annual meetings in physiology. Depending on the local tradition, physiologists may be employed in primarily teaching positions. SPS should be a relevant society for those of us that primarily devote our effort to university teaching. Therefore, we will have teaching symposia at all our annual meetings, but to lift the level of teaching support and resources available to our members, we need to collaborate with the sister societies.

Communication

SPS is to develop a communication strategy to support the activities within the Society, support our Society journal, and engage our community. The full communication strategy includes a steady and continuous presence on social media (X and LinkedIn) and a regular newsletter and shorter information with direct communication to the members. The social media engagement will extend to Acta Physiologica and will include a promotion of our members’ scientific products when published in the Society journal widely. As the core of the communication plan, SPS have had a facelift of the website, with a simplification of the content for easier overview. The news feed will here reflect the ongoing activities also in the SIGs, newsletters to the members and the social media appearance.

Science publication

SPS own and publish the journal Acta Physiologica. This is intended as the main channel to communicate our members scientific productions. The profile of the journal, with its strong scientific standing is of course appealing far beyond our membership forum. As mentioned, all Society journals are challenged by a new publishing scene. We have recently renewed our contract with Wiley for the period 1st of January 2024-31st of December 2026. Within the SPS Strategy Sep2022-2026, we will together with our Editor in chief, work for getting Acta Physiologica in shape to go open access when the contract ends in 2027.

Society Governance

The Scandinavian Physiological Society changes its chair per rotation between the participating countries every fourth year. This rotation is healthy for the organisation by ensuring representation and inclusion. Since the society with the rotation also changes office support, this principle puts a strain on governance. It is part of the SPS Strategy Sep2022-2026 to tighten the governance of the society for smoother transfer and continuation. The ExCo will create an annual cycle of work based on our first year in the chair (Sep. 2022-2023) that include all our main activities for easy transfer in Sep 2026 and improved membership support. For our new website function, we have had a membership system built in, allowing the members to update their membership information. This will make it easier to keep track of membership payments and membership status. Before the transfer of members to this system, we analysed our membership profile to make sure we only included active members in the new system. Similarly, we are working on the principles for governance regarding the running of Acta Physiologica. These are the initial steps, but we plan to expand our activities to provide better administrative support for the SIGs, making it easier to accept the responsibility of chairing a SIG.

Economy

The SPS economy has had a very positive development in the recent years. However, the result for 2022 is very disappointing. This mainly reflects the changes in the global economy and our engagement in Europhysiology2022. Although the impact of the market on our budget is very likely to improve, we are moving towards open access with Acta Physiologica, which will impact our and means that we need to prioritise our obligations. In the memorandum of agreement that we have and will sign, the meeting in the future is planned as cost neutral. This means that our expenses for the annual meeting will decrease, allowing us to continue with financing SIG initiatives and travel grants. The strategy for SPS Prizes will have the financial consequence that the prizes are given out through the Society allowing precise budgeting. Overall, the SPS Executive Committee strive for cost effective administration of SPS and our journal to allow for support of science and scientific networking.

With hope the SPS Strategy Sep2022-2026 will keep SPS an appealing, agile society for our current and new members – and that SPS will continue to be a relevant collaborator for sister societies around the world.