First Year of Biophysica

“I can’t believe another year has passed already” is what most of us think when another birthday is upon us or when we see our children grow. Anniversaries conjure questions such as “was it not just last month that we…”, and in our case, recently, the end to that question was “…wrote our inaugural editorial?” [1].

Indeed, time moves fast, and the open access online journal Biophysica is one year old, or rather, one year young, first published in March 2021. As a brief reminder of who we are: our journal is interested in publishing research that uses biophysics (classic or modern) approaches to advance our understanding of biologically significant problems or develop new technologies. Possible publication formats are original research papers, research communications, or reviews describing exciting new results in the following areas:

• Structure and dynamics of biomolecules and their assemblies: proteins, nucleic acids, biological membranes, and supramolecular assemblies;
• Biomolecular machines: enzymes, motors, channels, receptors, transporters, circadian clocks, and other biological nanomachines;
• Genetics and gene expression mechanisms: genome architecture, chromatin structure and dynamics, gene expression, DNA repair, genome editing, and epigenetics;
• Cell biophysics: electrophysiology, cell division, signaling and migration, cell differentiation, tissue organization, and tissue engineering;
• Biophysical techniques and instrumentation: methods for the high-resolution structural and dynamic analysis of biomolecular systems, single-molecule spectroscopy and manipulation, biological imaging methods and applications, and biosensor engineering and design;
• Theory and modeling of biological systems: applications of statistical mechanical modeling, computer simulations, or methods for the quantitative analysis of large biological datasets aiming at the rationalization or prediction of experimentally measured phenomena.

Other areas of interest are:

• Biomechanics, sensing, and signaling;
• Quantitative synthetic biology;
• Bioengineering, nanotechnology, and biomaterials.

What have we accomplished? Plenty. With 36 members, our editorial board is strong, and we plan to add another 10 in the near future. Please let us know if you want to be considered as a member of the editorial board. We are looking for Associate Editors with backgrounds in all the areas above, particularly in Genetics and Gene Expression Mechanisms, Biophysical Techniques and Instrumentation and Quantitative Systems Biology, to complement our current board.

We have acknowledged key contributions from 84 reviewers [2] who helped us make peer-reviewed decisions to publish 35 papers out of 57 submissions (an acceptance rate of 61%, which will likely go down significantly as we become more established). Indeed, the community is watching and reading, with around 25,000 abstract views as well as nearly that number for full-text paper downloads for the year.

We have set up eight Special Issues so far (three in 2021), which have already published a handful of papers, with more coming: Feature Paper in Biophysics, Advances in Structure-based Drug Design and the Present and Future of Protein Engineering as well as the Role of Water in Biological Systems have found particular resonance, but these and other Special Issues are open for receiving manuscripts (State-of-the-art Biophysics in Italy/Spain: Biophysica Country Special Issue, and Microscopy, Metabolism and Metabolomics and Biomaterials and Bone).

Our second year will be just as busy: we are looking forward to your ideas for additional Special Issues and potential collaborations in the management of such Special Issues, your suggestions for the future cooperation of Biophysica with more scholars and universities, and perhaps to showcasing Biophysica at conferences, now that conferences are returning to being in person.

We are, of course, looking forward to your manuscripts. The average current time to first decision is 19 days. The editorial office for Biophysica at MDPI, with the assistance of the editorial board, is always there to help.