VHL News Network

CAPES Journal Portal and the growth of Brazilian science

The Brazilian scientific research growth by 19% in 2005, and by about 50% in the past fives, was celebrated by the President of CAPES, Jorge Guimarães, in a collective interview given in the SBPC annual meeting. Measured by the number of publications indexed in the Thomsom-ISI database, the Brazilian scientific production in 2005 represented 1.8% of the world production and ranks 17th in the list of countries. Access to scientific information is one of the main lines of action promoted by CAPES to support the development of graduate courses and scientific research in Brazil. The CAPES Journal Portal has been in continuous operation since its launching in 2000; it provides, to over 180 academic institutions, free access to more than 10 thousand titles of scientific journals and to a selection of 16 major international referential databases. Roughly 5.5 million articles were downloaded in the first 5 months in 2006. The crucial role played by the portal to promote democratic access to scientific information is publicly acknowledged by the UNIFESP and BIREME
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SciELO Argentina celebrates its first anniversary with 22 titles

The SciELO Argentina Collection celebrates its first anniversary in July 2006. With 22 titles, almost 100 journals and roughly 1200 articles published online and in open access mode, SciELO Argentina is positioned to be one of the major collections in the SciELO network. Its development is coordinated by the Centro Argentino de Información Científica y Tecnológica (CAYCIT-CONICET) (Argentinean Center for Scientific and Technical Information) and supported by the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), through its Argentina Representative and BIREME/PAHO/WHO
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Network of knowledge on health in the Internet era was discussed at the III FNRS

The Rede Unida and PAHO, by means of Brazil Representative and of BIREME/PAHO/WHO, promoted the 3rd FNRS, within the 7th National Congress of Rede Unida, in Curitiba, Parana, on July 15-17, 2006. The conferences, workshops, presentations and activities were directed to the advantages, perspectives and challenges that the development of Internet brought to health institutions and networks, in order to strengthen and extend the networked activities and to enhance competence of individuals and teams by means of democratizing access, contextualization and publishing of scientific and technical information and evidence. José Paranaguá Santana, manager of the Technical Unit of Human Resources Policies of the PAHO Representative, Abel L. Packer, Director, Rogério da Costa, MTI manager, Elenice de Castro, EVE/GA coordinator and Shirley Silva, SCI librarian, represented BIREME in the event
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Pierre Lévy gave a conference on Semantic Web in the Rede Unida event

The program of the 3rd National Forum of Health Networks, in the 7th National Congress of Rede Unida, held in Curitiba, and promoted by the Rede Unida and PAHO, by its Representation in Brazil and BIREME/PAHO/WHO, included a conference by the French philosopher Pierre Lévy on the topic "The semantic web and its perspectives for health communities and networks". The conference had online transmission. The audience comprised over 400 people, apart from Internet users who followed online and participated in the chat after the conference
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Collexis in the VHL - automatic indexing and search by concepts

The VHL has over 15 million online bibliographic references, and represents both an extraordinary advance for users in terms of volume of information available and an increasing challenge to provide search results that are relevant, precise and with minimal noise. Maximizing bibliographic search results and the number of relevant documents, as well as minimizing the number of irrelevant documents, are the core problems of retrieval methodologies and algorithms. The VHL provides, among several retrieval methods, the option to search by health concept descriptor vectors via the Collexis technology, to facilitate the result hierarchy process and search of similar documents
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ABINIA and USP hold a course on web reference professionals

On July 12-14, 2006, Ernesto Spinak, consultant of the AFI coordination of BIREME/PAHO/WHO, gave the course "Advanced Web Reference Professionals", at the Instituto de Matemática of USP (Universidade de São Paulo). The course was promoted by ABINIA (Associação das Bibliotecas Nacionais de Ibero-América), coordinated by USP, represented by Mariza Leal de Meirelles do Couto, librarian, of the Sibi Net (Integrated Library System) of the University. It aimed to use and assess information technologies that benefit library referential systems. Twenty-three librarians from USP, UNESP, UNICAMP and BIREME took part
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