ELISAD Gateway -  Scope policy
 

• This document is the scope policy for the ELISAD Internet catalogue on alcohol and drugs information.
• Any resource which falls outside the scope criteria of this document will be rejected.
• Resources within the scope of this document will be assessed by the Editorial Board according to the Gateway's quality selection criteria.

Information coverage

1. Subject matter

• Only web resources with a thematic focus on Alcohol, Tobacco and other Drugs (ATOD) will be included.
• Websites with a focus on addictive behavior such as compulsive consumption behavior, gambling, eating disorders, etc., will also be collected.
• Websites on health and social drug use consequences such as HIV, hepatitis, driving, will be collected provided there is a specific section related to ATOD use.
• In first line, information of relevance to ATOD professionals will be included: people employed in ATOD services and treatment centres, health educators, prevention actors, teachers, librarians, information officers, policy makers, students and academic researchers active in the ATOD field. Next to this core target group, the ELISAD gateway is intended to serve the general public with access to selected quality information.

Preliminary list of subjects to be covered by the ELISAD Internet catalogue:

• ATOD documentation, culture and publishing, including databases, libraries, journals and Internet services as well as cultural work like arts, film, history, ethnography and subculture
• ATOD prevention, including all kinds of prevention aims, tools, activities, projects, programmes
• ATOD policy, including official, governmental policy actions such as law regulation, enforcement, paradigms and priorities as well as NGO initiatives upon specific issues
• ATOD research, including all kinds of disciplines and approaches from bio-medical to social sciences
• ATOD services, including service offers from public and private carriers to various target groups
• ATOD treatment, all kinds of in-patient and out-patient treatment facilities, approaches and offers from private and public carriers
• ATOD economy, including, industry, commerce, legal and illegal drug trafficking, distribution and marketing

These subject areas are broadly defined with the intention to cover all possible areas of importance in the ATOD field and addictions environment.
 

2. Acceptable sources

Websites published by the following kinds of institutions / organisations are all acceptable provided that they fall under the subject matter criteria and that the website producer is clearly evident as responsible for the website content. The intention to focus on institutional / organisational websites is that these resources are likely to be of a durable and actualised nature. The ATOD gateway collection will encompass:

• governmental institutions and public administration services
• university units and other academic / scientific research institutes
• non-governmental political initiatives, organisations and associations
• networks of persons and organisations
• treatment institutions and hospitals
• non-profit and private sources such as self help groups, carriers of ATOD services

Commercial pages maintained by journal / book publishers specialised in the ATOD field will be considered.

Websites of drug users organisations will be considered if there is a clear statement of the organisation's mission, responsible persons evidence AND if they meet the criteria of giving substantive information pertaining to one or more subject areas (e.g. «policy», «information», «services»&)

Resources which contain information on potentially illegal areas such as drug-making guides, as well as drug purchase will be excluded.
 

3. Acceptable levels of difficulty

The content of the resources are expected to vary across a range of levels: many aim to be comprehensive for a broad public while others intend to be suitable for higher education levels.

For example, prevention websites for youth are using a simple language, eventually mixed with argot, scene or street terms to reach their public's interest. Of course, these websites are of interest for the gateway.

Meanwhile, emphasis should be given to high education level websites. Information that is official, scholarly and valided rather than popular is the prefered choice.
 

4. Acceptable types of resources

Resources should be available on the Internet for general public use. Information intended for use only by an individual or local group is unacceptable. This also concerns payment-based websites with access only for registered members.

Entire websites with a thematic emphasis on ATOD will be collected. In that case, the main domain URL will be catalogued into the gateway. Such websites can be listed to one or more thematic subjects of the ELISAD gateway if the institution's activities and website content are covering the according issues.

Website sections: ATOD resources located in a section of a larger and more general website, will only be included if of relevance or importance for the ATOD professional target group. An example is the German Drug Commissionsection, part of Ministry of Health website. Cataloguing of website sections is considered as an exception according to the relevance and substantiveness of information. In such cases the according URL extension can be catalogued where possible

Resources consisting entirely of links to other resources will be rejected unless there is substantial added value information by the means of annotations, etc.
 

5. Advertising

Resources that consist solely or mainly of advertising will be excluded.
 

Geographical coverage

1. Geographical restraints

• Particular emphasis will be placed on resources from 24 European countries, including non-EU States such as Eastern European websites.
• ATOD related web resources from organisations with European and international focus will also be included. There will be a strong emphasis on European projects and studies.
• In a later project stage, it is intended to extend the gateway geographical focus to other countries.
• There is no geographical restraint on the coverage of resources.

2. Language
Resources in all European languages will be accepted.
 

References:
- DESIRE Subject Gateways Handbook, http://www.desire.org/handbook. 2000
- Working papers by Thomas Rouault (TOXIBASE) Anne Singer (ELISAD), Marianne van der Heyden (Andromeda), Stephan Schulte-Naehring (DrugScope), Susanna prepeliczay (ARCHIDO), Stephan Quensel (BISDRO). 2001
- Gateway partners' discussion during the meeting, 6-8 February 2002, at the EMCDDA, Lisbon