In 2021 The Biologist will return to a quarterly print magazine, with more content published online between editions.

This shift in focus reflects a growing appetite for digital content, and allows us to respond to fast-moving or breaking issues in bioscience, such as COVID-19 or AlphaFold – while also helping reduce the environmental impact of the magazine. 

The Biologist has been published quarterly for most of its seven decades in print, moving up to five issues per year in 2013 and six issues per year in 2014. The print edition remains hugely popular with RSB members, and our first quarterly edition of 2021 will launch in early spring with a refreshed and cutting-edge design, packed with all the same great features: interviews with high-profile biologists; inspiring news, images, comment and research from across all areas of the life sciences; profiles of RSB members and Fellows around the world; reports from the Society's branches and of course, the terrifically tricky Biologist crossword.

This year, as the pandemic unfolded, The Biologist began to publish more online content in response to the rapidly changing situation and the huge amount of COVID-related work being conducted across the life sciences. This content has been hugely popular, with our series of "COVID Q&As" helping us to record our highest ever month for web-traffic. We will continue to increase our online output in 2021 and now offer several ways to access The Biologist on digital devices – from our dedicated website to our fully searchable digital archive.

By moving to a quarterly cycle, we will save almost four tonnes of paper and packaging per year, and we will continue to explore how to be more efficient with resource use in future.

As of 2021, RSB members will have access to:

• Four print issues of The Biologist – spring, summer, autumn and winter
• Access to online highlights via thebiologist.rsb.org.uk
• Access to our fully searchable digital archive of magazines going back to 2012
• Access to downloadable PDFs of each print issue

For more information on accessing The Biologist online and in print, contact tom.ireland@rsb.org.uk