Biophysical Society Bulletin | June 2019

President’s Message

The Importance of Biophysical Journal to the Society and to the Field of Biophysics The first goal of the Biophysical

science fair awards, the BPS Bulletin , student chapters, the International Ambassador Program, webinars, job board, net- working events, Biophysics Week activities, the video library, and many other features of membership. The Biophysical Journal is important to the budget of the Society, and also to the profession and field of biophysics as a whole. However, BJ is struggling with a decreasing number of submissions, with fewer than half the number of submissions that we received 10 years ago. If this drop in submissions continues, BJ will die, which would be a major loss to the field of biophysics! At the same time, the Society would need to find other sources of revenue or shut down programs. When asked why they do not submit papers to BJ, our members mention its low impact factor as a major reason. Because of its broad topical coverage, the nature of many articles, and the high acceptance rate, Biophysical Journal is not going to be a high impact factor publication. For example, some papers describe a new instrument: It is unlikely that many other groups could duplicate the instrument, apply it to their biological questions, and publish novel results within the two-year window measured by the impact factor. Addi- tionally, some fields of biophysics require long-term exper- iments that do not lend themselves to rapid advances, but are important nonetheless. Those fields are often shut out of trendy journals that are focused on maintaining their impact factor. These issues are borne out by data, which show a longer article citation half-life for BJ than for the high impact factor magazines, but those data are not reflected in the im- pact factor. It is also important to understand that the impact of any given paper is essentially independent of a journal’s impact factor, but this point appears to be lost by administra- tors and many scientists. We know that it would be straight forward to raise the impact factor of BJ significantly, for in- stance by reducing the acceptance rate to the 10–20 percent range. However, surveys of the owners of BJ, our members, have consistently shown a preference for keeping a higher acceptance rate that allows all members an opportunity to publish their best work in BJ. Of course, the impact factor is not the only reason that sub- missions are declining. The proliferation of “baby” journals sprouting from the magazines with easy transfer inclusive of the previous reviews has proven effective in keeping manu- scripts that are rejected from the top impact factor journals from finding their way into Biophysical Journal or other society journals. These and other issues have led to the formation of the Scientific Society Publisher Alliance (byscientistsfor- science.org) to promote publishing in society-owned journals.

Society is not surprisingly “Sharing knowledge in and about biophysics.” This goal is accomplished through the Annual Meeting and smaller meetings throughout the year, as well as through outreach such as Biophysics Week. However, the

David. W. Piston

permanent record of biophysical knowledge is shared through the pages of the Biophysical Journal (BJ), which is owned and operated by the Society for the benefit of our members and the field. BJ exists to serve our member, author, and read- er communities by (1) setting high standards (all decisions are made by editors who are practicing scientists, and who choose peer-reviewers who are experts in the field), (2) pro- viding an outlet for a broad swath of our members’ research whether it is currently trendy or not (the average acceptance rate for research manuscripts is ~40%), and (3) keeping costs affordable (an average paper from a member is published for less than $900). The first two points are critical for the field as the Biophysical Journal has served as the major archival record for state-of-the-art biophysical research for almost 60 years. Society journals have a long history of promoting scholarship while also generating income that supports society programs. Although the Biophysical Society owns the Biophysical Journal and controls every aspect of its content, we found that we could not afford self-publishing without significantly raising page charges. About 10 years ago, the Society contracted with Cell Press, an imprint of Elsevier, to publish and distrib- ute BJ. Although BJ is published by a commercial publisher, it is a not-for-profit publication, and income that comes back to the Society is reinvested in our programs. This income is important for BJ’s continued mission as the standard bearer for biophysics research, and also for the Society to keep dues and meeting registration fees as low as possible. The Society has three main sources of revenue: dues, income from the Annual Meeting, and income from Biophysical Journal . While the absolute amounts of these fluctuate over time, they are comparable so that each supports about one-third of the Society’s annual budget. Much of the society’s expenses are related to BJ and the Annual Meeting, but both of these aim to operate in the black and thus, support our other member services. Without the funds from publications and meetings we would be forced to make hard choices in cutting support for Public Affairs, Education, Diversity and Inclusion, Early Careers and Professional Opportunities for Women Commit- tees, as well as subgroups, thematic meetings, travel awards,

June 2019

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