''Biochimica et Biophysica Acta'' (''BBA'') is a

peer-reviewed Peer review is the evaluation of work by one or more people with similar competencies as the producers of the work ( peers). It functions as a form of self-regulation by qualified members of a profession within the relevant field. Peer revie ...

scientific journal In academic publishing, a scientific journal is a periodical publication intended to further the progress of science, usually by reporting new research. Content Articles in scientific journals are mostly written by active scientists such ...

in the field of

biochemistry Biochemistry or biological chemistry is the study of chemical processes within and relating to living organisms. A sub-discipline of both chemistry and biology, biochemistry may be divided into three fields: structural biology, enzymology and ...

and

biophysics Biophysics is an interdisciplinary science that applies approaches and methods traditionally used in physics to study biological phenomena. Biophysics covers all scales of biological organization, from molecular to organismic and populations. ...

that was established in 1947. The journal is published by

Elsevier Elsevier () is a Dutch academic publishing company specializing in scientific, technical, and medical content. Its products include journals such as '' The Lancet'', '' Cell'', the ScienceDirect collection of electronic journals, '' Trends'', ...

with a total of 100 annual issues in ten specialised sections.

History

Early years

''Biochimica et Biophysica Acta'' was first published in 1947 and was the first international journal to be devoted to the joint fields of

and

.A short history of Elsevier (Elsevier; 2005)
(accessed 12 December 2008) Published by

in cooperation with

Interscience John Wiley & Sons, Inc., commonly known as Wiley (), is an American multinational publishing company founded in 1807 that focuses on academic publishing and instructional materials. The company produces books, journals, and encyclopedias, in p ...

, it was the first international journal to be launched by Elsevier. The journal first made a profit in 1951. Early papers were published in English, French, and German, with summaries in all three languages. The majority of papers in the first volume originated in northern and western Europe, with a minority from the US and elsewhere; contributors included

William Astbury William Thomas Astbury FRS (25 February 1898 – 4 June 1961) was an English physicist and molecular biologist who made pioneering X-ray diffraction studies of biological molecules. His work on keratin provided the foundation for Linus Pauling ...

Jean Brachet Jean Louis Auguste Brachet (19 March 1909 – 10 August 1988) was a Belgian biochemist who made a key contribution in understanding the role of RNA. Life Brachet was born in Etterbeek near Brussels in Belgium, the son of Albert Brache ...

, Hubert Chantrenne, Pierre Desnuelle,

Claude Fromageot Claude may refer to: __NOTOC__ People and fictional characters * Claude (given name), a list of people and fictional characters * Claude (surname), a list of people * Claude Lorrain (c. 1600–1682), French landscape painter, draughtsman and etcher ...

, Heinz Holter, Raymond Jeener,

Felix Haurowitz Felix Michael Haurowitz (March 1, 1896, Prague – December 2, 1987, Bloomington, Indiana) was a Czech-American physician and biochemist. Biography Haurowitz spoke German as his native language but also spoke fluent Czech from early childhood. Duri ...

, Edgar Lederer, Kaj Linderstrøm-Lang,

Roger Vendrely Roger is a given name, usually masculine, and a surname. The given name is derived from the Old French personal names ' and '. These names are of Germanic origin, derived from the elements ', ''χrōþi'' ("fame", "renown", "honour") and ', ' ( ...

, Jean-Marie Wiame, and Ralph W.G. Wyckoff. Important papers from these early years include "Studies on the structure of ribonucleic acids" by

Boris Magasanik Boris Magasanik (December 19, 1919December 25, 2013) was a microbiologist and biochemist who was the Jacques Monod Professor Emeritus of Microbiology in the Department of Biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. After moving from Harv ...

and

Erwin Chargaff Erwin Chargaff (11 August 1905 – 20 June 2002) was an Austro-Hungarian-born American biochemist, writer, Bucovinian Jew who emigrated to the United States during the Nazi era, and professor of biochemistry at Columbia University medical scho ...

(1951), part of the evidence on which Watson and Crick's model of the structure of DNA was based, and "Enzymic synthesis of deoxyribonucleic acid" by

Arthur Kornberg Arthur Kornberg (March 3, 1918 – October 26, 2007) was an American biochemist who won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1959 for the discovery of "the mechanisms in the biological synthesis of ribonucleic acid and deoxyribonucleic ac ...

and colleagues (1956), an early report on the isolation of

DNA polymerase I DNA polymerase I (or Pol I) is an enzyme that participates in the process of prokaryotic DNA replication. Discovered by Arthur Kornberg in 1956, it was the first known DNA polymerase (and the first known of any kind of polymerase). It was initia ...

Diversification

''Biochimica et Biophysica Acta'' was published as a single title until 1962, when additional sections began to be published alongside the main journal: first ''Specialized Section on Nucleic Acids and Related Subjects'' and then, from 1963, ''Specialized Section on Enzymological Subjects'' and ''Specialized Section on Lipids and Related Subjects''.OHSU Library: BBA Decoder
(accessed 10 December 2008) In 1964, the main journal became ''Biochimica et Biophysica Acta (BBA) - General Subjects'', and was published alongside the three established sections plus ''Specialized Section on Biophysical Subjects'' and ''Specialized Section on Mucoproteins and Mucopolysaccharides''. In 1965, the specialist sections were renamed, becoming ''Biophysics including Photosynthesis'', ''Nucleic Acids and Protein Synthesis'', ''Enzymology and Biological Oxidation'', ''Lipids and Lipid Metabolism'' and ''Mucoproteins and Mucopolysaccharides'' (ceased in 1965). In 1967, ''Biophysics including Photosynthesis'' split into ''Bioenergetics'' and ''Biomembranes'', and ''Enzymology and Biological Oxidation'' split into ''Enzymology'' and ''Protein Structure''; the latter pair rejoined in 1982 to become ''Protein Structure and Molecular Enzymology''. Further sections were ''Molecular Cell Research'', launched in 1982, and ''Molecular Basis of Disease'', launched in 1990. In addition to the specialised research sections, three review sections were launched in the early 1970s: ''Reviews on Biomembranes'' (1972–2000), ''Reviews on Bioenergetics'' (1973–87) and ''Reviews on Cancer'' (from 1974). The former two were later incorporated into the respective research sections. Further name changes are given in the table in the following section.

Modern journal

As of 2014, ''Biochimica et Biophysica Acta'' encompasses ten specialised sections with a total of 100 annual issues in ten volumes. Over 16,000 pages were published in 2011. The journal sections are published separately, with one annual volume per section (two for ''Reviews on Cancer''), but form part of the volume numbering for ''Biochimica et Biophysica Acta''. Sections are available individually or as part of a combined subscription. All papers are in English. The overall

editor-in-chief An editor-in-chief (EIC), also known as lead editor or chief editor, is a publication's editorial leader who has final responsibility for its operations and policies. The highest-ranking editor of a publication may also be titled editor, managing ...

Ulrich Brandt Ulrich (), is a German given name, derived from Old High German ''Uodalrich'', ''Odalric''. It is composed of the elements '' uodal-'' meaning "(noble) heritage" and ''-rich'' meaning "rich, powerful". Attested from the 8th century as the name of Al ...

(

Goethe University Frankfurt Goethe University (german: link=no, Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main) is a university located in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. It was founded in 1914 as a citizens' university, which means it was founded and funded by the wealt ...

, Germany). The sections published in 2014 were as follows:

Indexing and online journal

''BBA'' is abstracted and indexed by

BIOSIS BIOSIS Previews is an English-language, bibliographic database service, with abstracts and citation indexing. It is part of ''Clarivate Analytics Web of Science'' suite. BIOSIS Previews indexes data from 1926 to the present. BIOSIS Previews is ...

Chemical Abstracts Service CAS (formerly Chemical Abstracts Service) is a division of the American Chemical Society. It is a source of chemical information. CAS is located in Columbus, Ohio, United States. Print periodicals ''Chemical Abstracts'' is a periodical index th ...

Current Contents ''Current Contents'' is a rapid alerting service database from Clarivate Analytics, formerly the Institute for Scientific Information and Thomson Reuters. It is published online and in several different printed subject sections. History ''C ...

/Life Sciences, EMBASE, EMBiology,

Index Chemicus Index (or its plural form indices) may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Fictional entities * Index (''A Certain Magical Index''), a character in the light novel series ''A Certain Magical Index'' * The Index, an item on a Halo megastru ...

MEDLINE MEDLINE (Medical Literature Analysis and Retrieval System Online, or MEDLARS Online) is a bibliographic database of life sciences and biomedical information. It includes bibliographic information for articles from academic journals covering med ...

Index Medicus ''Index Medicus'' (''IM'') is a curated subset of MEDLINE, which is a bibliographic database of life science and biomedical science information, principally scientific journal articles. From 1879 to 2004, ''Index Medicus'' was a comprehensi ...

Science Citation Index The Science Citation Index Expanded – previously entitled Science Citation Index – is a citation index originally produced by the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) and created by Eugene Garfield. It was officially launched in 1964 ...

, and Sociedad Iberoamericana de Informacion Cientifica.Elsevier: ''Biochimica et Biophysica Acta'': Abstracting and Indexing
(accessed 10 December 2008) Articles are available online as

PDF Portable Document Format (PDF), standardized as ISO 32000, is a file format developed by Adobe in 1992 to present documents, including text formatting and images, in a manner independent of application software, hardware, and operating systems. ...

s and

HTML The HyperText Markup Language or HTML is the standard markup language for documents designed to be displayed in a web browser. It can be assisted by technologies such as Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and scripting languages such as JavaS ...

; access is largely limited to subscribers, with a small number of sponsored

open-access Open access (OA) is a set of principles and a range of practices through which research outputs are distributed online, free of access charges or other barriers. With open access strictly defined (according to the 2001 definition), or libre op ...

articles.

References

External links

*
''BBA Special Issue Overview'' website
{{RELX Elsevier academic journals Publications established in 1947 Biochemistry journals English-language journals Journals more frequent than weekly