Repositories without frontiers

15 May 2008

Today, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) adopts 'Open Repository' – the service from BioMed Central, which allows institutes to build, launch, host, and maintain their own repositories.

Whilst MSF is well known for its humanitarian medical work, the organisation also produces important research based on its extensive field experience within vulnerable populations. Its studies have often changed clinical practice and have been used for further humanitarian advocacy.

Through the implementation of the Open Repository system, MSF is now able to provide a personalized in-house repository that maximises the distribution of their research at a fraction of the cost of other commercial systems.

Speaking of the new system, Tony Reid, Medical Editor for Médecins Sans Frontières said: "The vast majority of our medical work, and by extension our research activities, take place in poorer countries where access to scientific publications is often difficult and expensive to obtain. With Open Repository, we are able to make MSF's research experience available to health workers, policy makers and researchers in those countries in an easily-searchable format at no cost."

Reid went on to add "Throughout the development process for this site, I have been most impressed by the support and professionalism provided by BioMed Central's Open Repository team. They have been unfailingly helpful and cooperative and I believe the final product demonstrates excellent quality."

There is an ever increasing number of funding bodies mandating open and unrestricted access to published research. This has necessitated institutions like MSF to look for innovative ways to store and publicize their open access research. BioMed Central's Open Repository service provides an extremely cost effective solution for institutions looking to showcase their open access research. Not only does the system help institutions comply with open access mandates, but it can also be fully customized to help organizations raise their profile and showcase their intellectual output.

Médecins Sans Frontières is just one of 15 organizations who have adopted the Open Repository solution since its inception.

"Open Repository provided our organization with a hosted solution that was quick and simple to set up, customizable to our needs and extremely easy to use," said Adam Edwards who adopted the service in 2007. "We switched from our previous repository service with Digital Commons because Open Repository offered much better value for money and all of the features we required."

Open Repository is built upon the latest version of DSpace, an open-source solution for accessing, managing and preserving scholarly works. Customers of Open Repository benefit from updated system features not only from DSpace themselves, but also from BioMed Central's team who are continually working to enhance their repository service.

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BioMed Central (http://www.biomedcentral.com/) is an independent online publishing house committed to providing immediate access without charge to the peer-reviewed biological and medical research it publishes. This commitment is based on the view that open access to research is essential to the rapid and efficient communication of science.

Médecins Sans Frontières (http://www.msf.org/) is an international humanitarian aid organisation that provides emergency medical assistance to populations in danger in more than 70 countries.

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