A little over two years ago the Biophysical Society agreed to partner with IOP Publishing to create a definitive series of ebooks in biophysics. In that time, two books have published: Physics of Cancer, volumes 1 and 2, both written by renowned biophysicist Claudia Mierke. A further 11 titles are scheduled to publish over the next few months and that number is growing all the time. But who is the driving force behind the series, coordinating the effort to build a library of biophysics book content that aims to serve our diverse research community? Meet Jessica Fricchione, your dedicated editor at IOP Publishing, and learn why our membership needs your contribution.
After stints at World Scientific Publishing and Springer Nature, Fricchione has worked as a senior commissioning editor at IOP Publishing for more than four years, specializing in medical physics and biophysics titles.
What’s the biggest challenge you’ve faced in commissioning for the ebook series so far?
It’s going really well so I’d have to say no significant challenges so far. I’ve been out at conferences and met some interesting people working in a diverse range of fields and the reaction to and interest in the series is phenomenal. We’ve published two great titles already and have a solid line up of books in the pipeline, but I’m always going to be interested in more, so I’d love to hear from any BPS members who would like to consider contributing. What I’ve found from talking to people in the industry is there’s a real desire for a program dedicated to the biophysical sciences; publishing a book with us will work toward addressing that need.
How do you feel the BPS book series benefits the membership?
Having a book series specifically endorsed by the Society, aimed at the membership and the greater research community, is a great way to share your work with like-minded people, enabling collaboration across disciplines, research, and countries. This series offers members something genuinely new and exciting in digital publishing. There’s a wide range to what you can publish in the series; textbooks, monographs, reviews, handbooks covering all areas of biophysics research, and books on applications, education, methods, computational tools, and techniques are all welcome.
Why ebooks?
The digital capabilities of the series extend from simple benefits such as choice of text size and text-to-speech for those with impaired vision, all the way to interactive figures, videos, quizzes and other multimedia elements to really enable learning. Simply put, these features are an extension to the Figure360 feature available in the Biophysical Journal. These multimedia enhancements offer benefits to the reader, such as interactive and animated figures that can bring the science to life and facilitate understanding. Features like this mean that our ebooks can provide a valuable bridge between fastpaced YouTube-style information consumption and the much more in-depth and nuanced style of knowledge acquisition still required by students and researchers.
Our digital focus also offers the flexibility to publish different kinds of books and quickly. Our standard 12-week production schedule is much faster than industry norms and something our authors really value.
How can publishing a BPS ebook promote your work?
We already have over 1,000 institutional customers in 45 countries around the world and usage from students and researchers at these institutions has, on average, doubled every year since 2014, with chapter downloads now totaling almost three million.
The feedback we get from customers around the world is that our support for use on any device and our no-digital rights management policy is a real advantage for libraries. It means their users can easily research in real-time without concurrent user limits, and across multiple reading devices. All of these elements help to increase exposure for our authors’ work.
What if someone wants print copy of a book?
No problem. We know many people still value the physical book, so we have retained a print component to offer that choice for readers and authors.
Why should our members publish in this Series?
The Biophysical Society-IOP Series is the only book series tailored to the BPS membership, making this the perfect venue for your long-form publishing. As both BPS and IOP Publishing are not-for-profit societies, proceeds from the series are reinvested in research, outreach, funding, conferences, and more. We’re able to work directly with BPS and talk directly to your peers, ensuring you’re the first to hear about the latest books publishing in your area of work.
We also have a great editorial advisory board featuring scientists from across the Society and chaired by member Les Satin. Other members include Geoffrey Winston Abbott, Mibel Aguilar, Cynthia Czajkowski, Miriam Goodman, Jim Sellers, Joe Howard, Meyer Jackson, Kathleen Hall, David Sept, Da-Neng Wang, Leslie M. Loew and Andrea Meredith. These people help shape the collection and uphold the Society’s standards.
What should our members do if they’re got an idea for book but don’t know what the next steps are?
Get in touch. I’m here to help develop their ideas and help turn them into great books as well as taking finished manuscripts to publish. We can discuss the need for the book, flesh out the idea further, and the discuss options for adding enhanced and interactive features if desired.
You can contact me at [email protected] or visit https://iopscience.org/books/iop-series-in-biophysical-society for titles published and forthcoming.
We’re delighted to announce that BPS members benefit from a 30% discount on all books in the series.