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Down Syndrome Online

Looking for information? Visit Down Syndrome Online for articles, books and other information resources

Down Syndrome Archive

This project will create and maintain a freely accessible repository of scientific papers, articles, book chapters, presentations and dissertations relating to Down syndrome to preserve them and to make them available to families, professionals and researchers.

There is an extensive literature associated with Down syndrome. Most is published in scholarly journals that are not widely accessible to families and practitioners. Moreover, many conference presentations, out-of-print books and book chapters, and other useful resources are not easily accessible.

Within the scientific community, greater calls for Open Access to publicly funded research outputs has led to new Open Access  conditions being implemented by leading research funders as conditions of their grant awards[1-3]. To accommodate these requirements, many commercial publishers now permit authors to deposit copies of papers in publicly-accessible repositories, such as PubMed Central and UK PubMed Central. These archives include peer-reviewed journal papers from participating publishers and self-submitted manuscripts from authors funded by organisations with Open Access policies.

Education

To supplement other public archives of scientific papers, this project will develop and maintain systems to store, preserve, index and publish resources relevant to families, professionals and researchers with an interest in issues for people with Down syndrome. The archive will accept manuscripts and (copyrights permitting) publication copies of journal articles, books chapters, books and presentations.

This project will develop the systems for the submission, storage and indexing of resources, and provide online access to all of the material stored in the archive.

The Down Syndrome Archive will be closely integrated with the charity’s other information resources. The Trust will deposit all of its published articles and books and all future contributions to Down Syndrome Research and Practice.

The Down Syndrome Archive will be freely accessible on Down Syndrome Online at http://www.down-syndrome.org/archive/

Research

This project will support research activities by providing improved access to the scientific literature across disciplines.

Staffing

Impact

  • Increase access to information for families, practitioners and researchers.
  • The preservation of a comprehensive archive of literature relevant to Down syndrome.

Status

Funding

We are seeking funds for this project.

If you would like to support this work, please visit our giving site for details of how you can help or contact giving@downsed.org.

Related projects

Notes and references

  1. Wellcome Trust. Wellcome Trust position statement in support of open and unrestricted access to published research. 2007 [cited 2007 Mar 27]. Available from: http://www.wellcome.ac.uk/doc_WTD002766.html
  2. Research Councils UK. Access to research outputs. 2006 [cited 2007 Mar 27]. Available from: http://www.rcuk.ac.uk/access/
  3. National Institutes of Health. Policy on enhancing public access to archived publications resulting from NIH-funded research. 2005 [cited 2007 Mar 27] Available from: http://publicaccess.nih.gov/