Which community should a biophysics question belong to?

Question

From Wikipedia:

Generally, biophysics does not have university-level departments of its own, but has presence as groups across departments within the fields of molecular biology, biochemistry, chemistry, computer science, mathematics, medicine, pharmacology, physiology, physics, and neuroscience.

In Wikipedia the Biophysics category belongs to both Branch of Biology category and Applied and interdisciplinary physics category. My biophysics question needs mainly biology and computational science on the surface and physics on its core. Which community should I post to?

Answer 1

Your talking about an interdisciplinary problem that is as old as science itself. It's pretty rare that an applied solution to any real-world problem can be found purely in the study of physics or chemistry or mathematics, etc.

Many of our pure science sites are heavy in theoretical and academic discussions, but there are also a lot of applied practitioners who are going to have experience in other areas. So the trick is to start with the community with the strongest foundation in your question. A lot of astronomers are going to have a strong physics background. Biology has a strong component of chemistry. Some sites are going to be stronger in figuring out computational solutions. The site you want to start with is the one who is most likely to augment the expertise you most need.

I know that doesn't directly answer your question, but it's the best answer to anyone who has ever faced a real-world problem… which is pretty much everyone. Pick the site where you need help the most.

Answer 2

While knowing the field of the question can help you determine the community that will best be able to solve it for you, the actual question itself will determine which community you should ask.

If you have a big long question that would take experts from several communities, working collaboratively, to answer, then it's probably too broad for the Stack Exchange network. You should look at breaking it up into many smaller problems.

If the question is 1) answerable, 2) reasonably scoped, 3) practical, 4) a problem you actually face, then it's likely that you'll be able to discern which community's experts are best equipped to answer it, on a question by question basis.

You will likely be asking some questions on one site, and others on another site. This is perfectly fine, there's no reason you should avoid participating in several sites simultaneously.

Answer 3

• Computational Science has biophysics tag. My original question, which is about whether a physical theorem should be applied regarding a structure of a file, is answered on this site.
• Bioinformatics is a closely related field. Questions about preparing and examining protein files are perfectly suited there.