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Russian Information Transfer Programme
Helping international science and commerce benefit from Russian cold regions expertise.
A collaboration between the University of Cambridge; Faculty of Geology, Moscow State University; Russian Academy of Sciences; Cambridge University Press, United Kingdom; and GSL Network, Ottawa, Canada.
About
Approximately 50% of Arctic land lies in Russia. When this is combined with the extensive continental shelves lying to the north of Russia, it is clear that a large proportion of the world's potential resources is located here. Such resources require special expertise to exploit them and though the Russian cold region scientific and technical knowledge is unrivalled, little of this currently reaches the West. Today, the free flow of information is obstructed not by politics but by language, and by a publications structure which means that much significant research is only reported in small circulation Russian-language journals and monographs, virtually unobtainable throughout much of Russia, let alone elsewhere.
The special role of the Scott Polar Research Institute
Throughout the Cold War, the Scott Polar Research Institute was one of very few places where Russian and Western scientists met. As Russian scientists routinely visited the Institute, the Library made use of the contacts established to build up a network of arrangements with research institutes carrying out work in the Russian Arctic and in Antarctica whereby their publications were received in exchange for the Institute's publications. Today, the Institute's researchers are primed to collect publications during their fieldwork in the Russian Arctic. Literally hundreds of publications have been brought back in recent years, many of them published in remote centres, and unobtainable even in Moscow and St Petersburg. Through the Russian Information Transfer Programme, these resources are now being made available.