A large number of Government agencies, research institutions and academic institutions across the world create databases in various fields of science and technology. Today, many of these databases are available free on the World Wide Web through individual portals or websites of the respective organizations. Unfortunately, these databases are not separately classified. So a user upon searching on the Internet gets thousands and millions of hits and keeps on clicking the websites to find if there is a relevant database associated with any of the websites. It is a time- consuming process and due to the limitation of search engines, only a hundred sites can be checked at any given point in time. It leads to poor awareness and accessibility of freely available databases.

The objective of Listing of Open Access DataBases (LOADB) is to create a web-enabled, linked, classified and categorized collection of Open Access Databases which one can access from a single portal. Although initial focus is on science and technology subjects, the ultimate aim is to include all subject areas.

It is a pilot listing and is being subjected to peer review to build a quality controlled collection of Open Access Databases. The listing is open to all publishers who publish databases in Open Access mode. LOADB will rely on crowd sourcing model to update and sustain its services and welcomes submissions and suggestions from all the stakeholders such as database publishers, research institutions, universities, libraries, government and private agencies, scholars and students.

LOADB is a service of CSIR’s Unit for Research and Development of Information Products (URDIP) located at Pune in India and is being developed for the Open Science and Open Innovation Infrastructure Project supported by CSIR at URDIP. More features and services will be added as the project moves forward. CSIR-URDIP will join hands with like-minded partners to further the cause of open access moment.

CSIR-URDIP does not guarantee the content of any database. Publishers are responsible for the information about their organization and their products.