Bioline international and the Journal of Post-graduate Medicine: a collaborative approach to open access publishing

Bioline International (BI) was set up in 1993 as a result of increasing dissatisfaction among scientists about the way research publications, particularly those from developing countries, were (or were not) distributed. Managed by scientists, librarians, and information professionals on a not-for-profit basis, BI provides electronic publishing and distribution services for publishers of biomedical journals from developing countries who wish to increase the visibility, accessibility, and impact of their publications. With limited print circulation, journals from developing countries usually do not reach the global readers who would benefit from the content. An online presence with a common search platform for multiple journals offers the desirable visibility for such journals. With this in mind, in 2002, the Journal of Postgraduate Medicine (JPGM) joined BI as an open access journal. JPGM is a quarterly biomedical publication of Staff Society of Seth G.S. Medical College and K.E.M. Hospital, in Mumbai, India. The collaboration of BI and JPGM sets an example for the ways in which journals from developing country can benefit from low-cost shared technology and extend accessibility to their content. In this presentation, we discuss technical as well as policy issues pertaining to such collaboration. In particular, we highlight the importance of adopting open standards and protocols in order to maximize interoperability between databases, provide an example of how to promote open access to and sharing of public scientific resources while considering new funding opportunities and the rights of authors, and illustrate the importance of institutional collaborations in the advancement of knowledge building and sharing on a truly global scale