This work discusses new mechanisms of cooperation among Science, Technology and Medicine information systems arisen with the emergence of electronic archives of free digital publications - the open archives - and of interoperability standards between them as the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting. A historical scheme of the emergence of electronic publishing and open archives as alternative mechanism of scientific communication to the traditional academic journals is presented. New information services and cooperation schemas brought about by the raising of open archives are discussed too. Finally, consequences and opportunities of this situation to developing countries are analyzed.
Scientific communication; Digital libraries; Digital documents; Science, technology and medicine information; Cooperation and resource sharing; Open archives; Interoperability; Protocols
