Here is BioTechniques in a nutshell: Since 1983, we have published the world’s most-cited and most-read general-methods journal, proud of our mission of providing practical, peer-reviewed laboratory techniques free to the world’s largest audience of bench biologists.

BioTechniques was born into a world without automated gene sequencers, polymerase chain reaction gene amplification, confocal microscopes, green fluorescent protein, interfering RNA, or any of a hundred other techniques we now consider indispensable. Off-the-shelf kits were few. A researcher needing reagents made them, often after consulting Molecular Cloning: A Laboratory Manual (T. Maniatis et al.), published just the year before. The first edition of Molecular Biology of the Cell (B. Alberts et al., eds.) wouldn't appear until later that year.

That first issue carried a statement of purpose that has guided the publication through the decades: “BioTechniques is published to serve laboratory scientists engaged in basic and applied bio-research … to foster and enhance the dissemination of information about laboratory techniques and manipulations that is of general interest and value.”

We have held to that mission ever since, publishing the best in contemporary laboratory methods and providing them without charge to researchers at the bench. Pursuing that goal has given us much to be proud of. BioTechniques pioneered the original, and most durable, model for providing open access to peer-reviewed research. We have consistently transcended the boundaries of scientific disciplines to bring useful new methods to the whole community of working life scientists.

Above all, we have served a growing community of tens of thousands of working life scientists. Their loyalty and contributions—as readers, authors, and reviewers—have built BioTechniques from a single title into a network of print and electronic resources dedicated to helping researchers get results better, faster, and cheaper.

Our well established Molecular Biology Forums have brought together researchers with questions and researchers with answers since 2002. In 2007, we launched BioTechniques Weekly, the flagship of our our expanding fleet of e-mail newsletters, which highlight funding opportunities, new products, the business side of research and the lighter side of science. In 2008, we expanded our geographic reach with an audited digital edition targeting readers in Asia’s expanding markets. At the same time, we widened our topic horizons with the quarterly insert, BioTechniques for Preclinical Development. In 2009 we introduced a new graphic design for the print BioTechniques, making it more compact, easier to read, and easier to use. We launched the community-generated BioTechniques Protocol Wiki. And we completely overhauled BioTechniques.com.

As the pace of change quickens, BioTechniques' staff more than ever looks forward to working with readers, authors, reviewers, and advertisers, bringing the international life-science research community together.

According to ISI’s Journal Citation Reports, BioTechniques articles were cited 7,952 times in 2007, the latest full year for which data are available. It places 11th on the list of 60 publications in the “biochemical research methods” category, behind more specialized titles: Journal of Chromatography (A&B), Analytical Biochemistry, Bioinformatics, Methods in Enzymology, Electrophoresis, Proteomics, the Journal of Immunological Methods, the Journal of Magnetic Resonance, and Acta Crystallographica D.

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