''Principles of Biology'' is a college level

biology Biology is the scientific study of life. It is a natural science with a broad scope but has several unifying themes that tie it together as a single, coherent field. For instance, all organisms are made up of cells that process hereditary i ...

electronic textbook published by

Nature Publishing Nature Portfolio (formerly known as Nature Publishing Group and Nature Research) is a division of the international scientific publishing company Springer Nature that publishes academic journals, magazines, online databases, and services in sci ...

in 2011. The book is not a digitally reformatted version of a paper book. The book, the first in a projected series, is Nature Publishing's first foray into textbook publishing.

Format

''Principles'' is composed of 200

modules Broadly speaking, modularity is the degree to which a system's components may be separated and recombined, often with the benefit of flexibility and variety in use. The concept of modularity is used primarily to reduce complexity by breaking a sy ...

, which can be customized by the instructor. The modules combine text, images, simulations, interactive exercises, self-tests, and formal tests. The book draws on the science journal ''

Nature Nature, in the broadest sense, is the physics, physical world or universe. "Nature" can refer to the phenomenon, phenomena of the physical world, and also to life in general. The study of nature is a large, if not the only, part of science. ...

s archive of research papers. It was created by a group of more than 100 scientists, instructors,

scientific illustrators Science is a systematic endeavor that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe. Science may be as old as the human species, and some of the earliest archeological evidence for ...

, interaction designers, and faculty reviewers. It is available in formats for computers, tablets, and smartphones. No traditional paper edition is available. The book is purchased on a one-time payment subscription basis, with the purchase covering all future updates or supplements.

Reception

The book has been adopted for use at

California State University The California State University (Cal State or CSU) is a public university system in California. With 23 campuses and eight off-campus centers enrolling 485,550 students with 55,909 faculty and staff, CSU is the largest four-year public univers ...

. One favorable reviewer described the text as "post-Gutenberg", referring to the

Printing Revolution Printing is a process for mass reproducing text and Printmaking, images using a master form or template. The earliest non-paper products involving printing include cylinder seals and objects such as the Cyrus Cylinder and the Cylinders of Nabo ...

that occurred upon the development of the

movable type Movable type (US English; moveable type in British English) is the system and technology of printing and typography that uses movable components to reproduce the elements of a document (usually individual alphanumeric characters or punctuatio ...

printing press A printing press is a mechanical device for applying pressure to an inked surface resting upon a printing, print medium (such as paper or cloth), thereby transferring the ink. It marked a dramatic improvement on earlier printing methods in wh ...

Johannes Gutenberg Johannes Gensfleisch zur Laden zum Gutenberg (; – 3 February 1468) was a German inventor and Artisan, craftsman who introduced letterpress printing to Europe with his movable type, movable-type printing press. Though not the first of its ki ...

ca 1439. The book, and its umbrella textbook publishing division, has been described as potentially breaking down the traditional textbook publishing business model. The work has been compared with other publishers' electronic textbook experiments, including

Wolfram Research Wolfram Research, Inc. ( ) is an American multinational company that creates computational technology. Wolfram's flagship product is the technical computing program Wolfram Mathematica, first released on June 23, 1988. Other products include Wo ...

References

External links

''Principles of Biology'' at the Nature Publishing Group website

''Principles of Biology'' at the Principles of Science (beta) textbook series website
2011 non-fiction books Biology textbooks 2011 in biology {{biology-book-stub