Biophysical Society Bulletin | July/August 2019

Publications

BPS-IOP eBooks on the Rise An Interviewwith Commissioning Editor Jessica Fricchione A little over two years ago the

reviews, handbooks covering all areas of biophysics research, and books on applications, education, methods, computation- al tools, and techniques are all welcome. Why ebooks? The digital capabilities of the series extend from simple ben- efits 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 fast- paced 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 re- searchers 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 concur- rent 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.

Biophysical Society agreed to part- ner 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 re- nowned 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

Jessica Fricchione

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 dedicat- ed editor at IOP Publishing, and learn why our membership needs your contribution. After stints at World Scientific Publishing and Springer Na- ture, Fricchione has worked as a senior commissioning editor at IOP Publishing for more than four years, specializing in medical physics and biophysics titles. It’s going really well so I’d have to say no significant chal- lenges 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 communi- ty, is a great way to share your work with like-minded people, enabling collaboration across disciplines, research, and coun- tries. 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, What’s the biggest challenge you’ve faced in commissioning for the ebook series so far?

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