Editorial About this Magazine

Do we need another bulletin?

Presenting Biofísica, the new SBE magazine

Jesús Salgado, ICMol (Valencia)

Jesu3The question of having a periodical publication, made-by-and-for the “Sociedad de Biofísica” has come up from time to time in some of our meetings. Nowadays, dozens of such bulletins slip into our e-mail boxes, in the form of more-or-less classical magazines or simple one-page newsletters, sent by Societies, Institutions, Journals or Companies. Do we really need another one?

Certainly, we might not need it… Although, it may be welcome if it is a useful mechanism to communicate within our Spanish Biophysics community, events, news and comments of our very specific interest. It may be welcome if such an information is offered in an attractive, dynamic, light-weight format, easily accessible. It may also be welcome if the receptors of the bulletin, the SBE members, can as well participate, by transmitting their own articles, comments and announcements of news and events. And it won’t be bad after all, if it turns out to be an attractive vehicle for limited advertising by sponsors, which may help us financing our activities. All that is a big challenge! Fortunately, I have the privilege to count with the invaluable collaboration of Jorge Alegre, Xavi Daura and Teresa Giráldez, whose ideas and common-sense advise will help me to (try to) put it into practice.

We cannot promise that this will be a worthy bulletin, but we will do our best for that, and we hope that you enjoy it!

Modern communication is evolving very rapidly and offers many opportunities for easy and efficient distribution of information. We have chosen to use the flexibility of electronic formats to create a modest online magazine with some blog features: Biofísica. It will be freely available through the internet, hosted in a registered domain (biofisica.info) and will contain fixed sections with Articles, Publication Highlights, Announcements (like Events, Positions and Prizes) and News. As you are seeing in this first issue, we have chosen English as the main language of the magazine, but with the possibility of using Spanish, specially for Articles and depending on the topic and preference of the Author.

Each number (with a total of three per year) will be available live on the magazine web site until the next number is issued. During the four moths life-time of a current issue, all content, except for the Articles, will be actualized and readers will be able to comment or debate on the Articles and some other special posts. At the appearance of each new issue, the previous one will be frozen and archived on the web site in pdf format, and this will be conveniently announced to SBE members via e-mail through a special Newsletter.

We can neither promise nor guaranty that this will be a worthy bulletin, but we will do our best to achieve that, and we really hope that you find it useful and enjoyable! Suggestions and criticisms are very much welcome.

Jesús Salgado
Instituto de Ciencia Molecular – ICMol
Universitat de València
C/ Catedrático José Beltrán 2, 46980 Paterna (Valencia), Spain.
E-mail: jesus.salgado@uv.es