Cochrane Library National Provision renewed for three years (2010 to 2013)
The Cochrane Library is now freely available for three more years to all residents of India with internet access thanks to funding from the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR).
From 29 January 2007 the Cochrane Library had been made freely available to all residents of India with internet access thanks to funding from the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) (www.icmr.nic.in), and work of the South Asia Cochrane Netork (www.cochrane-sacn.org).
This national licence has now been renewed by the ICMR for a further three years and is an example of responsible leadership in healthcare. India is the only low income country to purchase a national provision to the Cochrane Library.
Who is using The Cochrane Library?
Usage statistics of Wiley InterScience for India and Worldwide.
Jaslyn Tan, Piyush Gupta, Ashish Sood, Laura Sampson; Wiley InterScience
(Poster presented at the 8thd Winter Symposium of the Christian Medical College, Vellore and the 3rd South Asian Regional Symposium on Evidence-Informed healthcare, CMC Vellore; January 11-14, 2010)
Background: The dissemination of high quality, timely evidence is a priority for The Cochrane Collaboration and for the ICMR who fund a national access licence for India. By monitoring usage, exploring user activity, and identifying trends we can build on our understanding of how people use The Cochrane Library, where they come from, and which reviews they access. We can use these data to help us identify ways of increasing access to and usage of The Cochrane Library in India and worldwide.
Methods: For the worldwide data the periods of 1st January 2008 to 31st December 2008, the number of unique visits to www.thecochranelibrary.com, number of visits by country, and most accessed Cochrane reviews on Wiley InterScience were taken from the Wiley InterScience Data Warehouse, an analysis tool that stores and tracks usage data. Another set of usage data was obtained from all other licensed providers of The Cochrane Library, showing the number of abstracts and full text articles that were accessed during 2008 from Wiley InterScience, EBSCO, OVID, La Biblioteca Cochrane, BIREME and www.cochrane.org. For the India usage data the periods calendar year 2006, 2007, 2008 and Jan – August 2009 were considered, so as to help investigate the impact of introducing national access, using the IP ranges for India to identify India usage activity as registered from Wiley InterScience Data Warehouse.
Results: In India, in 2008 a full text article was downloaded from Wiley InterScience every 7 minutes. For India this represents an increase in usage of The Cochrane Library of 648% from Year 2006 to Year 2007 and 14% from Year 2007 to Year 2008 and by August 2009, the total full text download is already 68% of the total Year 2008 figures. Data taken from all websites of The Cochrane Library show that during 2008: A search of The Cochrane Library took place every 2 seconds; A Cochrane abstract was viewed every 3 seconds; A full text article was downloaded every 4 seconds. The total full text download for Cochrane Library in India in Year 2008 is 70,090; making India as one of the top 10 countries from Asia that visited Cochrane Library worldwide
Conclusions: In summary, usage of The Cochrane Library in 2008 has increased considerably in comparison to 2007. Over half the world’s population now have access to The Cochrane Library via one-click access (no login required), and it is clear that worldwide usage of The Cochrane Library is increasing as a consequence. Usage in India, since the national license was provided, access nationally has grown significantly and the usage levels now surpass many other developed countries with established national access schemes including Norway, Ireland and Poland establishing India as one of the top countries visiting and using The Cochrane Library.
Access to The Cochrane Library in other South Asian Countries
Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan and Bangladesh
All people in these countries have national access courtesy of John Wiley & Sons providing access to many countries on the World Bank's list of low-income economies via Health InterNetwork Access toResearch Initiative (HINARI).
Pakistan and Sri Lanka
Access to the full content is by subscription only though all people can access the summaries of Cochrane Reviews from www.thecochranelibrary.com or from the collaboration's website. We are exploring ways in which greater access to the full content of The Cochrane Library may be possible to people in these countries.