OLSPub fundraising for accessible medical knowledge

ZB MED – the Information Center for Life Sciences is currently running a nationwide fundraising campaign to garner support for OLSPub, a new open publication database for the life sciences. The project aims to ensure the long-term availability of reliable scientific information for research and medical practice, independent of external infrastructures.

This initiative was prompted by the growing reliance of medical information on a few privately owned or politically influenced systems. According to ZB MED, the failure of these systems could pose significant risks to research, healthcare, and innovation. OLSPub aims to address this issue by independently collecting metadata from scientific publications, storing it redundantly, and making it available as a public infrastructure.

ZB MED has planned three consecutive financing phases for implementation:

• Phase 1 (€600,000): Development of an alpha version with initial data integration
• Phase 2 (€800,000): Establishment of routine operations and integration of MeSH and other metadata.
• Phase 3 (€600,000): Completion of a product-ready beta system with an API and a European governance structure.

ZB MED aims to establish a sustainable, independent, long-term knowledge infrastructure with OLSPub that strengthens free access to medical knowledge and ensures research security.

OLSPub-Fundraising