The next-generation high energy physics information system, INSPIRE announced on June 11 that the Institute of High Energy Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (IHEP) became the first Asian member of the INSPIRE collaboration. IHEP is the fifth laboratory to contribute to this global effort at the service of the worldwide high energy physics community, alongside CERN, DESY, Fermilab and SLAC. 

After joining the team, IHEP will first focus on enhancing the Chinese HEPNames records, which will make it much easier to differentiate Chinese authors from one another and give them the recognition they deserve. This work must be done by hand in order to ensure the accuracy of the information in the database. 

As the most prestigious research center in China for particle physics, advanced accelerator physics and technologies, and radiation technologies and applications, IHEP is now one of the world’s leading scientific research centers. IHEP’s Information Services Department plays a crucial role in collecting, curating and providing scientific information for researchers in China. 

With strong support from IHEP and the other four laboratories, YU Runsheng, IHEP’s Head of Information Services, visited Fermilab on May 8 to speak at the INSPIRE Advisory Board meeting, where he outlined IHEP’s plans to contribute to INSPIRE. After a closed-door discussion, the INSPIRE team unanimously agreed that IHEP become the first Asian member to join the INSPIRE collaboration. 

This new partnership is an exciting step forward in the way INSPIRE has evolved over the last four decades. INSPIRE’s predecessor, SPIRES, started in the 70s as a High-Energy Physics publication database, jointly operated by SLAC and DESY. As of 2007, with CERN joining as a partner, the INSPIRE collaboration was born. A totally new infrastructure and augmented services were launched in 2010, replacing SPIRES with the modern INSPIRE. INSPIRE represents a natural evolution of scholarly communication, built on successful community-based information systems, and provides a vision for information management in other fields of science.