The Index Foundation receives the Medes-Medicina en Español 2013 award
The prestigious award was presented at the Royal National Academy of Medicine in the presence of notable authorities from the world of science
"Nursing knowledge flows and is used in spaces of proximity, where the language serves both for scientific communication and to understand us with citizens", defended Dr. Manuel Amezcua, President of the Index Foundation, upon receiving the 2013 Medes Award
On December 4, the Royal National Academy of Medicine held the delivery of the Medes-Medicine Awards in Spanish, in which the Index Foundation has been awarded as an outstanding institution in the promotion and dissemination of the biomedical publication in Spanish. In its 2013 call, the Spanish Society of Medical Oncology (SEOM) has also been awarded in its modality of best initiative in the use of Spanish for its virtual training program in Medical Oncology in Spanish-speaking countries.
The Index Foundation is the first nursing scientific entity to receive this prestigious award, which in previous editions has gone to institutions such as the National Library of Health Sciences of the Carlos III Health Institute, the Ibero-American Cochrane Collaboration, or the Royal National Academy of Medicine, in whose headquarters the prizes were delivered. MEDES is an initiative of the Lilly Foundation that aims to contribute to promoting scientific publication in biomedical journals in Spanish, as well as promoting its national and international dissemination through various research, training and outreach activities.
During the awards ceremony, Professor César Nombela, Rector of the Menéndez Pelayo International University (UIMP), gave the Conference "Spanish, the language of scientific communication", in which he recalled that the Spanish language is the heritage of 500 million native speakers and the third most used on the internet. "For all these reasons, Spanish is in a privileged position as the language of knowledge, despite the fact that we have to accept that the lingua franca for communicating science, in general, is English." "Capturing science and technology in our language, regardless of where it is developed, is essential to face the future", Professor Nombela stressed. "Language is not a mere tool to communicate, but the support of a well-formed thought".
After collecting the award, the president of the INDEX Foundation, Dr. Manuel Amezcua, a researcher at ibs.GRANADA, provided a double reason for communicating in Spanish during his speech: “People tend to think that only what is published in English is important. This probably makes sense in the basic sciences, but not in applied sciences like Nursing; Nursing knowledge flows and is used in spaces of proximity, where the language serves both for scientific communication and for understanding with citizens”.
The President of the Index Foundation, Manuel Amezcua Martínez, has expressed his satisfaction with the award received, which he extends to all the collaborators of the Index project: “Medes is possibly the most determined initiative in promoting our language as a vehicle for scientific knowledge . Today we receive your prestigious award, which we want to share with all the people and institutions that have made possible the activities carried out by the Index Foundation in the last quarter of a century”.
RECOGNITION OF NURSING SCIENCE
The INDEX Foundation has been recognized as the Best institution or outstanding entity in the promotion and dissemination of the Medical publication in Spanish. And it is that, among the achievements of this entity specialized in nursing knowledge management activities, there is the creation of a network of 50 collaborating centers distributed throughout Spain, Portugal and eight countries in Latin America. Another of its activities is the Cuiden database, with information from Ibero-American scientific journals on Nursing. “It is the most consulted Ibero-American source in this area, with more than 13 million hits a year. Sometimes Ciberindex registers peaks of more than 50.000 daily accesses”. Index also publishes journals, manages six research networks and carries out educational activities. “Last year we celebrated 25 years. Until then, more than 20.000 people had participated in our scientific events”.
INDEX was born in 1987, first as a scientific society under the primary care reform in Andalusia. "The objective was to carry out the reform without improvising, based on the available international knowledge", explained Professor Amezcua. Already in 1994, the entity was established in its current foundation form.
Regarding the future of the Index Foundation, Professor Amezcua has warned that its influence depends a lot on the knowledge management policies established in each country in which the professionals work: “In Spain, the evaluation agencies are very radical, what is published in English prevails almost exclusively”. According to its president, the Index Foundation is respectful of the natural processes of emergence of knowledge, while the gap between the ways that nurses use to guarantee the transfer of research and the opinion of the evaluating agencies about where and how they have to post nurses to be recognized. "But I believe that this will change gradually and the Spanish agencies and those of other Latin American countries will adapt to the evaluation systems of the most competitive countries in science, placing greater emphasis on the social impact of knowledge."
The MEDES Awards were created to encourage those initiatives that favor the use of our language in the communication of knowledge of the health sciences, in general, and of medical knowledge in particular, as well as to highlight the work carried out by the institutions or entities that make possible the production or dissemination of scientific literature in Spanish.