Digital Sovereignty: ZB MED Launches Fundraising for PubMed Alternative
Despite promises to secure independent research data, funding for the European OLSPub project remains elusive. A library is going on the offensive.
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The dispute over independent research data is entering its next round. The German federal government has pledged 30 million euros. However, this money seems to be getting stuck in bureaucratic channels or being diverted to other projects. For the establishment of the Open Life Science Publication Database (OLSPub), the German National Library of Medicine (ZB MED) currently finds itself empty-handed: a requested funding did not materialize. This forces the Cologne-based institute to take an unusual step for the scientific community: a large-scale fundraising campaign is intended to collect the required 2 million euros to realize the European answer to the US information monopolist PubMed.
Currently, European research, clinical care, and medical innovation depend heavily on US-funded services. While there are mirrors of PubMed data in Europe, these are merely technical copies that hang by a thread of transatlantic availability. Should the political wind in Washington shift or should economic interests restrict free access, European scientists would suddenly be without their central sources of information. For medical care, this would be a critical gap that could cost human lives in the worst-case scenario.
Backbone for Humane Medicine
OLSPub is intended to serve as a redundant lifeline here. It is about establishing an independent, public-benefit-oriented publication database for the life sciences. Unlike existing systems, OLSPub will collect metadata and abstracts directly from publishers, thus ensuring genuine independence from US infrastructure. This would permanently secure medical knowledge as a public good. Another concern of ZB MED: only through reliable, quality-assured, and politically independent data sources can it be ensured that AI models in medicine are not based on distorted or suddenly deleted datasets.
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Dietrich Grönemeyer, as a prominent supporter, emphasizes the urgency of the project. The micro-therapist sees OLSPub as an indispensable backbone for humane medicine in Europe. The current financing project is divided into three phases. It aims to establish an independent European regulatory structure for the project together with the specialist community and publishers.
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