Promote the scientific and technical work of French-speaking physiotherapists.
The placement of reference articles, research work, French scientific papers and official texts on-line is an important step in promoting physiotherapy. The publications can live beyond their actual date of publication. The original investment of the authors and researchers is optimised via the potential of diffusion. The better we share professional information, the better it is understood and therefore the 'professional' is called upon to participate in furthering our knowledge even more. More generally, the value of French documentation reinforces French-speaking countries? participation in an international exchange.

Facilitate access to information for both professionals and students
Research involves putting together existing publications. Investigators compile published articles as well as other documentation such as professional statements and official texts. Researchers, professionals and students can be involved in this systematic, methodological plan.

Improve knowledge and research in the domain of physiotherapy.
The putting together and sharing of French documentation facilitates the coming together, the exchange of competences and an inter-mingling of professional cultures. Furthermore, recent information (articles, thesis, and conferences) conveyed by the site can compensate, in a certain way, for the absence of scientific publications and techniques in physiotherapy in many French-speaking countries of the southern hemisphere or central and eastern Europe. The project aims also, for these countries, to fuel, for example, the helping of one another, the desire to document their practices, with their specialties and differences, and to enrich therefore, the international physiotherapy heritage with local competences and experiences.

The Kinedoc collaboration was built on different guiding principles in terms of the functioning and participation:

• voluntary  : the network is built on voluntary interest ;

• commitment  : each contributor commits as much as he/she can ;

• transparency : all information related to the project if accessible ;

• reciprocity : to avoid doubling-up of tasks and excess costs by regrouping resources and potential.

Database contents

• French publications :

• books

• journals

• professional recommandations

• Documents

• thesis

• technical updates

• conferences and professional events

• official texts (legislative and regulatory)

Human organisation

The project is based on the organisation of a network of institutional partners and professionals (figure 1).

Institutional promoters

public or private organisms contribute to the project via grants and by making available material and human resources.

Institutional partners

public or private organisms support the project, without contributing material or human resources. Their participation consists of moral support and/or a guarantee of credibility.

Steering committee

Group made up of representants of institutional partners and promoters, representants of potential users and a methodologist; independent personalities, experts or "expert opinions", or knowledge groups who are not part of the co-promoting organisations.

The steering committee covers the logistics of the project, sets the goals of the development of the site, determines the work methods, names the administrators, analyses the current and potential risks and decides the promotion strategy. The steering committee is assisted by technical advisors (documentalists, computer engineer, etc) and the webmaster that regulates the activity of the site.

Administrators

are the documentation professionals or physiotherapists in charge of the theme sections and the database. They insure the human functioning of the prospection and the indexing of texts in relation to their domain. They coordinate and carry out the activity of their department at the steering committee.

Indexers and correspondents

documentation professionals and physiotherapists, are also the organising correspondents of conferences and professional public events. The Indexers and correspondents are in charge of collecting the data and indexing it in the database.

• They select and critically analyse the literature ;

• They seize the data from the database.

Each referent is responsible for indexing a documentary source attributed to him according to his professional surroundings and possibilities (follow-up of theses, subscriptions, institutions, etc), according to eventual similar activities (indexation for a local library, conference planning, etc), and his available time, previously identified and declared. Each referent signs a charter of commitment which specifies his function, field of indexing covered and features of the volunteer.

The search engine, the index and consultation interface were created by the National Institute of Applied Science (l'Institut National des Sciences Appliquées) of Rouen. The overall development was coordinated by Guillaume BOULBES, engineer in the architecture of computer systems.

Site webmaster : Paul LYONNAZ

University Agence for french-speaking communities:

hosting and maintenance

French National Authority for Health (Haute Autorité de Santé):

supervision of the development

Association for the promotion of allied health professions:

project steering, deployment an international network