On Friday, December 21st 2006, in National Library of Serbia the beta version of SCIndeks: The Serbian Citation Index was promoted. At the same time, an organizational framework to populate the newly formed Repository of the National Library of Serbia with domestic journals in electronic form was established.

SCIndeks was presented as multi-purpose bibliographic product, which is supposed to serve the international promotion of locally published  journals, papers and authors, and at the same time their evaluation. The ultimate expected effect of the usage of SCIndeks should be raising the quality of local research and enlarge the country's scientific contributions.

At the same time the newly formed Repository of the National Library of Serbia to keep the journals in electronic form was promoted. The Repository is organized as a sort of a treasury, in which, in accordance with the demand of time, all  issues of local periodicals are archived, in order to be permanently protected and utilized in various programmes by the Ministry, including SCIndeks maintenance. Although permanent protection of national written heritage in electronic form in Serbia still has not been legally settled, the Repository is already operational and it works successfully in practice.

The speakers at the event were Dr. Aleksandar Popović, Minister of Science, Sreten Ugričić, director the National Library of Serbia, Biljana Kosanović, Head of the Center for scientific information NLS which held the Repository, and, in the name of CEON/CEES and SCIndeks development team,  professor Pero Šipka.

Numerous approvals, as well as some concerns were expressed on account of both SCIndeks and the Repository. In an unusually constructive spirit the participants worked out details to legal and organizational framework for cooperation of all the actors of this project. A small animation in which a ladybug, the trademark and promoter of SCIndeks was opening pages of the new application most certainly helped in creating such atmosphere. At the break, coffee was served along with chocolate candies in ladybug costumes.

Full SCIndeks version was announced for the end of 2007. Beta version is available at http://www.scindeks.nbs.bg.ac.yu/

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