Biophysical reviews—providing an effective critique

Abstract

This Editorial for Volume 13, Issue 4 of Biophysical Reviews begins with an introduction to the invited Review contributed by the 2021 winner of "The Michèle Auger Award for Young Scientists' Independent Research" (Assoc. Prof. Jorge Alegre-Cebollada). After providing a short summary of the other articles contained within the Issue, we discuss some additional matters important to the journal and its readers. In particular, this Editorial describes ongoing preparations for the upcoming IUPAB World Congress (October 4th-8th); it introduces two new Executive Editors from the UK and Spain; it describes the journal's placement in the latest SCIMago journal rankings, and it explains a new feature of the journal-"The Biophysical Reviews Historical Top Five". This piece closes with some thoughts about what might constitute a constructive critique of a manuscript.

Biophysical Reviews— 2021, the year that was

“…A particularly interesting aspect of the coming year’s lineup is the appearance of the “Regular Issue featuring an Issue Focus” within Issues 3 and 5. More fully described in the editorial for Issue 4 (Hall 2021b ), an Issue Focus is a contiguous block of articles within a regular issue that will allow smaller societies (not necessarily able to command the contributions necessary to make a full special issue) to make a “Special Issue L ite ”(so to speak).…”

“…The fourth issue for 2021 began with an introduction of two new executive editors (Prof. Stephen Harding (UK) and Prof. Germàn Rivas (Spain)) and then went on to provide some practical tips to potential reviewers of manuscripts on how to produce a useful and impactful critique (Hall 2021b ). The leading scientific content article of Issue 4 was concerned with the nanomechanical effectors of protein structure, contributed by Assoc.…”

“…Issue 1 -Special Issue on the Australian Society for Biophysics (Cranfield et al 2021) Issue 2 -Regular Issue featuring an Issue Focus on the Costa Rican Biophysical Society (Solís et al 2021) Issue 3 -Regular Issue Issue 4 -Special Issue on the Russian Photobiology Society (Tsygankov et al 2021) Issue 5 -Regular Issue featuring an Issue Focus on the life of Prof. Har Gobind Khorana Issue 6 -Special Issue on computational biophysics and structural biology of proteins -A Special Issue in honor of Prof. Haruki Nakamura's 70th birthday A particularly interesting aspect of the coming year's lineup is the appearance of the "Regular Issue featuring an Issue Focus" within Issues 3 and 5. More fully described in the editorial for Issue 4 (Hall 2021b), an Issue Focus is a contiguous block of articles within a regular issue that will allow smaller societies (not necessarily able to command the contributions necessary to make a full special issue) to make a "Special Issue Lite"(so to speak).…”