A numerical perspective on Nature authors.

Kyeong Kyu Kim of the Sungkyunkwan University in Suwon, South Korea, describes himself as a “structural biologist trying to elucidate the fundamental biological phenomena at a molecular level, and developing new bionanomaterials and pharmaceuticals”. Although his primary motivation for publishing his research is to share the results with other scientists, Kim admits that there is some pressure from his university, which has its own ambitions and emphasizes publications as a measure of scientific performance. This week, Kim and his colleagues describe the crystal structure of junctions between right-handed B-DNA and left-handed Z-DNA and demonstrate nature's simple solution for changing the form of DNA from one to the other by flipping two bases from the helix (see page 1183).

112 original research submissions to Nature in 2005 came from South Korea (total number of submissions=10,896)

12 papers published in Nature this year had contributing authors working in South Korea (total number of papers published=690)

83% of authors in South Korea who have contributed to Nature this year work in biological sciences.

3 authors working in South Korea report original research in Nature this week.