In the beginning there was Nature ‐ the world’s most prestigious scientific journal. Owing to the enormous growth in very high quality scientific research/the infinite enthusiasm of libraries for paying for subscriptions to new journals/the enthusiasm of scientists longing to read more research publications in their field (please let me know if you come across any of these at all)/the desperation of scientists who need to get published in order to keep up their own, and their institution’s, research ratings whether they have anything useful to publish or not (delete whichever you think is not applicable) Nature has now diversified into Nature ‐ Genetics, Nature ‐ Neuroscience, and, indeed, Nature ‐ Biotechnology. Nature ‐ Biotechnology has, in turn, spawned this directory.
The first half of the book is a list by country of companies, academic institutions and research organisations with a biotechnology connection, giving an extremely brief outline. Thus, if one turns to South Korea, one finds that there are three commercial companies in the country with an interest in biotechnology, and that Shin Ki Hi‐Tech, for example, has an address, phone, fax, and e‐mail numbers, its president is Mr Kim (surprise, surprise) and its area of interest is “Research & Development”. As a company profile this is fairly limited. There is nothing to say how big the company is, what exactly it researches and develops, what Mr Kim’s qualifications are, and whether he knows what he is doing, etc. I naturally looked up my own institution,just to make sure that I was mentioned, and that they had spelled my name right, but there is much less information about academic institutions given here than in the World of Learning, and much less about companies than in half a dozen different commercial directories. My own institution has fairly recently budded off a relevant company ‐ ReNeuron Ltd ‐ which is not mentioned here.
The next section of the book is divided into products, subdivided by country. Thus, for example, if you were looking for a supplier of polymer carriers in India you could discover that Fermentapharma are or were suppliers somewhere in that vast country, with phone and fax numbers, but no further information at all. Some of this seems extremely scrappy and incomplete ‐ I cannot believe, for example, that all of the world’s suppliers of laboratory animals are in the USA. Again, I cannot see much information here that is not readily available, in greater detail, in other commercial directories. Some of the companies have their logos etc. in bolder type (and, presumably, paid for the privilege). The final section of the book covers government and regulatory sources, along with some information about research grants extracted from the Grants Register.
The only real test of such a publication is to use it. I have had it by my desk for three weeks now, and have not had any enquiry which I could answer from it, which I could not readily answer from other easily available sources. Three weeks is, perhaps, too short a time to judge. I do not, to be honest, get that many commercial enquiries. I propose therefore, if a new edition comes out in a year’s time, and if the editor is willing to send it to me, to review the use I have made of this edition then. On the present showing, however, publishing this book seems to me to be a waste of a tree.
