Starting Line for MrWeb's MR-a-thon

204 weeks separate the Beijing Olympics and the start of the next games in London - precisely one week for each country that took part in the events in China. MrWeb will be following a trail across the world for the next four years, each week profiling one country and its research industry, linking also to news, jobs and suppliers.

That means that some weeks we'll have more to say than others: a good example of which is our first two entries. This week, the melting pot that is China - next week, the largely closed economy that is North Korea. The entry for China gives you an idea of what to expect in the busy weeks. In countries with little or no research industry, we'll provide more general stats and comment.

We'll finish, of course, in our own city of London - 'though there are already quite a few sections of the site dedicated to UK researchers, and we'll continue to operate our four 'regional' home pages (UK, USA, Australia, Asia) alongside the new feature.

Once they're up, the country pages will be here to stay and (the busy ones) will continue to change and develop. We started off almost ten years ago with the idea of being an online community for the industry, and we hope the new pages will help promote that idea in all countries. Note also that we may launch them for some countries independently - ie early - and just link them in / add some special features when our 'MR-a-thon' torch reaches them.

You can use them as a jumping off point for news and jobs about MR in each country, and we hope they'll be an active forum for researchers based there - they include comments and short items from our local readers - we have five contributions already published from contributors based in China, ranging from general comments on working in MR in the country, to views on the impact of the games and some of the trends emerging. If you have a specific response to one of these, please email us.

More generally, your comments and suggestions are welcome - and when we reach your country, we're likely to be in touch.

See you in London in 4 years' time?

The MrWeb / DRNO Team

All articles 2006-23 written and edited by Mel Crowther and/or Nick Thomas, 2024- by Nick Thomas, unless otherwise stated.