Tokyo was the setting on Wednesday for a Nature-hosted forum to promote networking in the Asia-Pacific. With representatives from 10 countries, the forum was a first attempt to make researchers from the region sit down and think about what benefits might be had by working together. The forum was timed to coincide with the 20th anniversary of foundation of Nature Publishing Group’s (NPG) representative company in the region, which recently changed its name from Nature Japan to NPG Nature Asia-Pacific, a sign of the importance Nature places on the region.

Why hold such a forum? Americans and Europeans network well and collaborate often, through both formal and informal arrangements, and create things like the European Molecular Biology Organisation (EMBO) which give them a bigger-than-the-sum-of-the-parts presence. Edison Liu, head of the Genome Institute of Singapore, raised the key question for Asia using SARS as an example. During the SARS scare, despite the virus’s Asian origin and mainly Asian path, research was coordinated by the US Centers for Disease Control and the World Health Organisation and much of the work took place in Europe and North America and even the significant work done in Hong Kong was funded by the National Institutes of Health. Liu asked: Why are large scale scientific interactions by Asian scientists most commonly with the West or at least coordinated by the West?

There are many answers, none fully satisfactory, but taken together, they add up to a powerful set of obstacles: culture, language, nagging political problems sometimes expressed in violent demonstrations or saber-rattling diplomacy, etc. There is also a tendency for Asian scientists, their funders, and everybody involved in science to think that everything important is really happening in the United States and, to a lesser extent, Europe. The upshot is that, for example, stem cell biologists in Beijing are more likely to know what is happening in Boston than in Tokyo or even Shanghai for that matter.

There have been a lot of hesitant steps toward collaboration, and a few notable successes.

Liu gave an example of the Pan-Asian SNP Initiative, a look into migration patterns and ethnic diversity in Asia through a study of DNA variations. It had to overcome two huge obstacles—an unwillingness to send genetic samples overseas and a tremendous disparity in wealth, infrastructure, and scientific know-how among the ten countries represented. They were able to do it. In another talk, Nobel laureate Ryoji Noyori discussed the success of pulling regional scientists together to found Chemistry: An Asian Journal.

Will there be more? It would be natural because of proximity and because economic power and infrastructure are balancing out. It would also be natural in fields such as: global warming/atmospheric chemistry, since China and India especially are going to be the biggest environmental threats given their growth and some of the nearby wealthy countries will have a vested interest in working together; stem cells, because scientists in the region share a significant level of expertise and relatively lax ethical regulations (with the exception of Japan); infectious diseases, because they often have an Asian origin and carry a greater threat to the nearby countries like SARS or avian flu; "Asian" diseases, such as Bechet’s disease, which strike primarily in Asia; the whole range of fields of material sciences, nanotechnology, and photonics in which Asian countries have a huge, and likely soon to be dominant, presence.

Could Asia-Pacific countries ever make a sum bigger than its parts? Will Asia ever be able to pull its weight as a scientific power alongside North America and Europe?

Certainly NPG and most other Western STM publishers are betting that the region will become an even bigger player than it currently is with their investments in local journals and, in the case of NPG, the placement of editorial staff in the region for the journals Nature Nanotechnology and Nature Photonics, a first for Nature journals. NPG Nature Asia-Pacific has seen its staff more than double to over 50 in the past two years, with offices opened in Hong Kong, Melbourne and Delhi, and the forum also offered an opportunity for staff from around the region to get together and celebrate while pursuing a common cause.

Away from science I came across this wonderful albeit illegible picture from a bilingual illustrated dictionary we publish in Japan. Somehow the idea of a lexicographer trying to figure out the Japanese for cricketing positions such as silly mid on and cover point appeals.