PSP Community Relations Committee 2011/2012

Introduction

The PSP Community Relations Committee identifies and supports publisher efforts to engage with external organizations (including government agencies, funding bodies, professional associations and academic organizations) in outreach and philanthropic initiatives.  The Committee is responsible for exploring opportunities to improve human well being, with a first-priority focus onmedical and health care issues. The Committee achieves its goals and objectives through education, advocacy and collaboration among scholarly publishers and other interested parties.

The membership of the Committee includes a Chair, appointed by the PSP Executive Council,and committee members recruited by the Committee chair and approved by the Executive Council to oversee specific relationships. The Committee members will work as ambassadors to oversee, report on and make recommendations on introducing and maintaining relationships with specific third parties.

Current activities and engagement:

• PSP/National Library of Medicine Subcommittee. A subcommittee of meets tri-annually with representatives of the NLM to discuss policy and explore cooperative efforts in the delivery of medical and health-related information.
  
1. Emergency Access Initiative. A collaborative effort between the PSP and NLM to provide libraries and hospitals with interim access to emergency health information in times of natural disasters.
• It is envisioned that parallel initiatives can be established with other government bodies including the National Academies of Science and the National Science Foundation among others.
• patientINFORM. A cooperative effort with the International Association of Scientific, Technical and Medical Publishers to provide credible, reliable information to patients, their family members and anyone interested in learning more about a specific disease or its treatment with access to the most important new research articles through the websites of participating health organizations or publishers.
• Research4Life. PSP members are engaged in this program to provide developing countries with free or low-cost online access to academic and professional peer-reviewed content in health, agriculture and environmental sciences.
• Chicago Collaborative. PSP is a member of the Collaborative, a working group established in 2008 to promote open communication and education among the primary stakeholders in the scholarly scientific communication area. Its membership includes representatives from a number of publishing and editing organizations and representatives from the Association of Academic Health Sciences Libraries (AAHSL) which provides administrative support for the Collaborative.