This should be of interest to those interested in cyberscience and collaborative projects: WHO launches OA portal on tropical diseases Open Access News “TropIKA is a new OA portal for research and information on tropical diseases. (Thanks to SciDev.net.) From its about page:”
TropIKA.net (Tropical Disease Research to foster Innovation and Knowledge Application) is a web-based platform for the acquisition, review and sharing of current information and knowledge on:
- Public health research needs and scientific opportunities
- Research-based evidence in support of control and policy
- High profile research activities and control projects
- International research funding and support opportunities
- Potential innovations for interventions and control of infectious diseases of poverty.
Rationale for TropIKA.net
…Informed participation of disease endemic countries in the global research agenda setting is often prevented by limited access to scientific information and essential knowledge. Rapid advances in the field of information technology have made it possible to share and deliver information at higher speeds and lower costs and several initiatives aiming at enabling access to high quality, scientific information, via Internet, are now in place. However researchers and policy makers face the other problem of haphazard flow of scientific information for which they lack time to screen, awareness of what is relevant and essential for their domain of activities and skills for interpretation and application in health interventions….
TropIKA is designed to enhance access and to share essential knowledge with health researchers and policy makers dedicated to improving control of infectious diseases of poverty….
Partners participating in the TropIKA.net initiative to date
- TDR (UNICEF/UNDP/World Bank/WHO Special Programme for Research and Training in Tropical Diseases)
- BIREME/PAHO/WHO, in Brazil: hosts and manages the portal
- HINARI: provides access to full text journals in specific countries
- The Global Heath Library (GHL) and the Virtual Health Library (VHL)
- Public Library of Science Neglected Tropical Diseases (and PLoS in general) for sharing “open access” scientific content and technology
- SciELO journals and other open access journals….