OpenMED, an open access Internet archive for research works on medical and allied sciences that is hosted by an Indian government body, has been nominated as a finalist for the prestigious Stockholm Challenge 2006 award.
Backed by the National Informatics Centre, OpenMED allows authors and researchers to self-archive their scientific and technical documents. The Stockholm Challenge is a prominent global networking programme for information and communication technology (ICT) entrepreneurs and its award is given away in the Swedish capital in the summer. It aims to show how IT "can improve living conditions and increase economic growth in all parts of the world." Over the years, some 3,000 projects have been submitted for this award....
Naina Pandita, senior technical director and project coordinator of the ICMR-NIC Centre for Biomedical Information at New Delhi, explained: "It accepts both published and unpublished documents relevant to research in the medical and allied sciences including bio-medical, medical informatics, dental, nursing and pharmaceutical sciences."
OpenMED accepts preprints (pre-refereed journal papers), post-prints (refereed journal papers), conference papers, conference posters, presentations, technical reports and departmental working papers and theses.
In case of non-English documents, descriptive data such as information of the author, title, source and the abstract and keywords are included in English...."We expect it to promote self-archiving and open access to papers or scholarly publications in these fields," said a member of the project team...."(Our) objective is to encourage the self-archiving culture amongst medical professionals in India. The goal is to preserve valuable research publications for future medical researchers and, side-by-side, to publicise research being conducted in the country," the project's promoters said in the application that made it to the final round in Scandinavia.
This project, argue its promoters, is based on E-Prints, free downloadable software, and this archive can be easily replicated. In future, the project plans to launch Open Access Journals as a non-commercial venture.
PS: OpenMed is hosted by the ICMR-NIC Centre for Biomedical Information, Bibliographic Informatics Division, National Informatics Centre. Congratulations to everyone at NIC.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 3/20/2006 07:49:00 AM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
