Hilda Bastian
Jeroen BosmanVery good English language write-up by @hildabast of the session today (20250514) on OLSPUB, a planned Pubmed safety net and alternative being worked on at ZB MED, the German national library of medicine. https://absolutelymaybe.plos.org/2025/05/14/germanys-plan-for-an-open-and-independent-pubmed-safety-net/. TL:DR: There's serious work going on to build an alternative Pubmed going beyond a mirror, so including independent ingestion of metadata and abstracts of new articles. https://www.zbmed.de/en/research/current-projects/olspub
@jeroenbosman Thanks! Such an impressive project!
James P Brosnahan@jeroenbosman @hildabast
Is the push to make an alternative to PubMed because the US government funds it? It feels like Europe is just trying to cut the Yanks out.
Is the push to make an alternative to PubMed because the US government funds it? It feels like Europe is just trying to cut the Yanks out.
@Jpbrosnahan1 @hildabast as I understand it, the drive is to make sure researchers worldwide are not dependent on some critical infrastructure that might be a single point of failure. So, strategically to have a comparable alternative.
@jeroenbosman @Jpbrosnahan1 Exactly. Much of it is preparation for what to do * if * the US pulls the plug, not the establishment of a competing service.
@hildabast @jeroenbosman preparation sounds like a country preparing for another World War.
@jeroenbosman @hildabast
The free-software movement gets snubbed every time a government or corporation brags about making an 'open' system.
The free-software movement gets snubbed every time a government or corporation brags about making an 'open' system.