Created: 8th September 1998, last updated: 9th September 1998, © 1998 ABRF
Message from the Executive Board
The recent ABRF by-laws ballot raised considerable interest among our members, particularly in our electronic discussion group. Of the two provisions on the ballot, that to change the name of the Association for Biomolecular Resource Facilities to Association for Biomolecular Research and Technology was controversial. This was clearly a time for reevaluation of what the ABRF means to each of us. While the vote was in favor of retaining the ABRF name, the approximate 60/40 split in votes underscores that our members join together in their interests in technology, but come from a variety of environments. The ABRF Executive Board wants to emphasize that we will continue to serve all of our members by continuing our mission "to promote and support resource facilities, research laboratories, and individual researchers regarding operation, research, and development in the areas of methods, techniques, and instrumentation relevant to the analysis and synthesis of biomolecules."
Please watch for the call for papers booklet for ABRF ‘99, which will have several special features of interest to our members. The theme of the meeting is "Bioinformatics and Biomolecular Technologies: Linking Genomes, Proteomes and Biochemistry". Mark Lively and David Landsmann have the majority of an exciting program in place. The abstract deadline will be December 11, so start thinking about presenting your best work. Look for the announcement of the ABRF Travel Awards program, which was very successful last year, and will be sponsored again by PE Biosystems-ABD. For the first time, the ABRF is offering a short course just prior to the meeting. The Mass Spectrometry Research Group has organized an intense course on "Protein and Peptide Sequence Analysis by Tandem Mass Spectrometry" to be taught by Professor Donald F. Hunt and his colleagues. Current ABRF members will be given priority for registration. This is a unique opportunity to learn from a leader in this field. There will be homework! We hope to see you in Durham next March.
This issue of the Journal of Biomolecular Techniques is a new step for the ABRF, a merger of the long-standing peer-reviewed newsletter ABRF News and the all-electronic JBT. The merger was done in order to enhance the content of the ABRF News, to provide a permanent, printed version of the electronic JBT, and to consolidate our official publications into a single forum. The proposal for merging the two association publications was prepared by an external taskforce of senior ABRF members, including the parent publication’s editors. The proposal was submitted to the Executive Board, along with a detailed cost analysis provided by an outside consultant. The projected cost increases are modest and should be easily recovered from advertising revenues. The Executive Board further refined and approved the proposed merger on June 23. Efforts are now underway to register the JBT with indexing services, obtain an ISSN number, establish publication and advertising partners and, in general, proceed with the establishment of JBT as a registered periodical. Our intention is not to compete with any other journal, but rather to serve our members by providing a forum for proven techniques and methodology. Accordingly, we will move forward only as needed and as resources allow. We wish Clayton Naeve success in developing this new forum for biomolecular technologies, and encourage you to submit your best work to the JBT.