Several years ago, Society members who had a strong interest in education approached the Society leadership with the idea that those who teach biophysics needed --for their own professional development--a peer-reviewed education-focused venue in which to publish. The BPS Council agreed, that in order for the field of biophysics to be fully recognized as a stand-alone discipline, it needed a publication that focused on biophysics education, broadly defined, published by biophysicists. An online journal concept fit well with the BPS strategic goals of advocating for the field of biophysics, supporting the next generation of biophysicists throughout the world, and providing biophysics-related teaching resources for the global biophysics community. Council, thus, charged the Publications Committee with developing a product to address these needs and goals.
The Publications Committee, along with a subset of Education Committee members, have since been working on preparing a comprehensive proposal. A working group composed of Linda Columbus, Les Satin, Gundula Bosh, and Will Guilford developed the initial outline, which was discussed extensively by the Publications Committee before being presented to Council. At its February 2018 meeting Council enthusiastically approved the final proposal, which includes a self-publishing business model. The Biophysicist, as the new open access, online only journal will be called, will begin publication in the second half of 2019.
The journal will include articles on generalized education, educational research, current topics in teaching and effective practices in the classroom, laboratory techniques, mentoring and leadership, biophysics history and perspectives on the field, curricula and program development, tutorial articles on specific topics in biophysics, software notes and applications, new technologies and digital instructional tools, assessment methods, as well as viewpoints, book reviews, letters to the editor, and more. The journal also will address effective practices in the classroom through written and video documentation.
The Society looks forward to this exciting new opportunity, which will further the BPS vision of biophysics as an interdisciplinary scientific discipline that develops the quantitative methods and techniques needed by scientists as they seek fundamental understanding of the biological, chemical, and physical mechanisms of life. The Biophysicist will be the vehicle by which biophysicists can educate, and be educated by, their peers in the pursuit of enhancing the learning process that will lead to discovering basic scientific insights, solving biological problems and, eventually, curing disease.