Open access

"Publish or perish!" has become the prevailing motto for anyone involved in the fields of scientific literature and research. For most researchers working in medicine, health, nutrition, the environment and agricultural science, that ultimately means making sure that their publications appear online.

One of the ZB MED’s responsibilities is to support authors from academia and the research community as they navigate their way through the publishing process. Reading the literature they produce is only one part of this process. The ZB MED also helps its customers find innovative ways of finding new outlets for their publications – and the principle of open access to knowledge is something that underpins all its activities.

One of the partners the ZB MED works with on this topic is the North Rhine Westphalia University Library Centre (hbz). The hbz is actively engaged in the Linked Open Data (LOD) movement. At the end of 2010, the ZB MED decided to participate in this project by providing open, public access to its catalogue data of more than 1,140,000 items from the subject areas of medicine, health & nutritional, environmental and agricultural science.

The data is available as raw data exports from the combined database run by the hbz and as linked open data within the scope of the resources service lobid.org.