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Welcome to the first issue of our new journal Biophysical Reports! Our vision was a journal that would bring together new advances in research methods, tools, and techniques in biophysics. We combined this with our second desire: to create a journal by the community for the community that is both excellent and accessible—a journal that charges only reasonable fees for publication that support the journal and the Biophysical Society and that is open to all readers around the globe; i.e., it is affordable for both the publishing scientists and the reading scientists.
With the strong support of the Biophysical Society behind us, we are proud to present today Biophysical Reports. We hope that the journal will become one of the most popular publication platforms for members of our community. Biophysical Reports differs from Biophysical Journal, the Society’s flagship journal, in its orientation and focus. Enormous technological advances have taken place in the second half of the last century and the first decades of the new millennium. How would we do biophysical research today without the revolutions brought about, for example, by the development of nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy, the many variants of single-molecule fluorescence spectroscopy, the invention of super-resolution optical microscopy, or the spectacular successes of single-particle cryo-electron microscopy? Biophysical Reports focuses in particular on such methodological advances, which are of immense importance for the overall development of biophysics. We welcome all contributions that present conceptual, methodological, and technological advances in biophysics, both theoretical and experimental. This thematic diversity is represented by our diverse Editorial Board, which brings together researchers from fields as varied as nuclear magnetic resonance (Paul Schanda), cryo-electron microscopy (Sharon Grayer Wolf), theoretical statistical physics and biophysics (Dmitrii E. Makarov), and microfluidic technology for single-cell analysis (Alexandra Ros), to name a few. In addition, our board includes 14 scientists from 8 countries around the world, reflecting our goal to serve the global community of biophysicists. We thank all board members for joining us on this new adventure.
Today, this endeavor can present its first milestone: the first issue is ready, and the methodological focus is evident in the contributions. Yuval Ebenstein and colleagues describe a very clever and powerful new method for spectrally resolved single-molecule imaging that allows them to identify and classify individual fluorescent molecules based on their emission spectrum (1). One of the most exciting applications of this technique is multiplex optical mapping of DNA, which enables rapid screening and classification of genomic information from a global perspective. In a short letter, Zheng Shi and colleagues present an intriguing application of the micropipette aspiration technique for the study of protein condensates, extending the application of this technique from membrane biophysics to the field of protein biophysics (2). In another paper, Quan Wang and colleagues offer a fascinating approach to studying the interaction between proteins and DNA by measuring the diffusion coefficients of the various constructs (3). Sarah L. Veatch and colleagues present an important technique for drift correction in single-molecule localization microscopy, providing a solution to a long-standing and vexing problem in wide-field super-resolution microscopy (4). In a short letter, Soheil Mojiri and colleagues explain a clever multi-plane, multi-color, wide-field imaging microscope that enables the acquisition of volumetric images of biological samples in three spectral emission bands simultaneously, with an imaging speed of several hundred volumes per second (5). Shimon Weiss and colleagues report on the recording of membrane potentials by using fluorescent nanodiscs, a technique that could have broad applications in studying the biophysics of neurons (6). And in the journal’s first review paper, Dixon J. Woodbury and colleagues provide a comprehensive overview of the use of 2,4,6-trinitrophenol-adenosine triphosphate for protein binding studies, discussing the potential of this important method as well as its challenges and problems (7).
To conclude, one last but important aspect of the new journal: we want to make publishing in the journal as fast and easy as possible, not only providing the opportunity to publish short important letters that will be evaluated by a single reviewer, but also shortening and streamlining the entire review and publication decision process as much as possible. So, join us and support our efforts to make Biophysical Reports a valuable and highly regarded new platform for outstanding biophysical research that is fully open access, offers affordable publication fees, focuses on methodological and technological advances in our field, and is fast, fair, and transparent in its editorial decisions.
References
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