jHASE MILESTONES/DEVELOPMENTS: jHASE partners with World Health Organization (WHO) and Google Scholar: WHO-sponsored African Index Medicus (AIM) and Google Scholar to index jHASE articles

Johannesburg, South Africa and Geneva, Switzerland, December 2007: World Health Organization and IEPH, Inc.

IEPH, Inc. (http://www.ieph.org/hase/jhase.htm ) the publisher of jHASE - Journal of HIV/AIDS Surveillance & Epidemiology, has achieved a landmark milestone in securing acceptance of jHASE for indexing in the WHO-sponsored African Index Medicus. All articles indexed in the database of the African Index Medicus can be searched through WHO's AIM web site at http://indexmedicus.afro.who.int/  or Google Scholar at: http://scholar.google.com/

The vision of WHO and AIM in indexing literature of relevance to Africa is well articulated in an article by Bertrand and Hunter (1998):


Article Title: African Index Medicus - A cooperative undertaking

Article Authors: Bertrand I, Hunter L

Authors' Affiliation/Sponsor: World Health Organization, Geneva, Switzerland.

Abstract: Although MEDLINE covers many of the significant medical periodical articles published in developed countries, there is still a considerable amount of medical and health documentation from countries outside the major industrialized areas which is not included. This paper outlines various initiatives to address this, and goes on to describe the setting up, on a cooperative basis, of the African Index Medicus, the problems encountered and progress made. 'Even if we should presume that most of the world's valid, important biomedical information originates in the West--and there is evidence (...) to suggest that this is wilful self delusion--what about at least a minority contribution from the rest? The 2% participation in international scientific discourse allowed by Western indexing services is simply too little to account for the scientific output of 80% of the world.'

PMID: 10179235 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]

Citation: Bertrand I, Hunter L. African Index Medicus - A cooperative undertaking. Health Libr Rev. 1998 Mar;15(1):17-20.

Link to the AIM abstract and full text article:
click here

Link to the Medline abstract:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10179235