UMIN--current status and future perspectives.

UMIN, fully funded by the Japanese government, is the largest and most versatile public academic information center for biomedical sciences in the world, and is considered as indispensable information infrastructure for the Japanese medical community. As of April 1st 2004, all Japanese national universities, including UMIN, will be incorporated as independent administrative entities. After the incorporation, each national university will have authority to determine its own budget, organization, etc. by itself, and will also be able to carry out profit-making business related to its activities under certain constraints. Thus we suspect that UMIN will inevitably be faced with a strong demand to undertake profit-making business at an early stage. Even in this case, we believe that UMIN should continue to provide its information services to the Japanese medical community free of charge as it has done, utilizing earnings from its profit-making business that services commercial companies, because the success of UMIN has depended on the cooperation and sympathy of the community in the past, and will continue to do so.