The WellBeing International Studies Repository provides open access to a wealth of reports and data covering the People, Animals, Environment Triad.
In September 2020, WBI formally announced the establishment of a new digital repository – the WellBeing International Studies Repository. This new Repository provides open access to a wealth of reports and data covering the People, Animals, Environment (PAE) Triad. The Repository recorded over 463,000 full text downloads in 2020.
We view this new resource as an essential component of our long-term strategy to promote global awareness and understanding of the interconnections between people, animals and the environment, and to emphasize that addressing one component of the Triad without considering the others will most likely not lead to satisfactory long-term solutions. Our current campaigns (e.g. Global Awareness, Feel Better and Global Dog Campaigns) are built around this belief.
The Repository is expanding from its original focus on animal issues to include new index structures covering human well-being and environmental sustainability. These are huge subject areas, but the Repository will (at least initially) focus on only certain elements. For human well-being, the Repository plans to emphasize materials on human diet and diet choices, on One Health, on human happiness and well-being, and on the impact of animal agriculture. For environmental sustainability, the repository will focus on agricultural impacts on protected lands, on ocean health, on wildlife corridors and connectivity and on environmental sustainability in general. Environmental education will also be covered but will be located under education.
Furthermore, we believe that new ideas supported by accurate and reliable data and innovative scholarship have been central elements (albeit not necessarily sufficient) in modifying human behaviors and in establishing new policies and approaches to solve and mitigate the world’s problems. We hold strongly to the importance of collecting, reporting, analyzing and preserving data to understand and drive social change. Our commitment to the new repository is predicated on the understanding that access to historical materials and time series data will allow us better to develop and support individual and community actions that will make a positive difference in the world.
Animal Sentience is in the WellBeing International Studies Repository
The WBI Studies Repository is also home to an important new online journal, Animal Sentience. The Editor-in-Chief of this new journal, Dr. Stevan Harnad, was the founding editor of the very successful academic journal Behavioral and Brain Sciences published by Cambridge University Press. He has brought his considerable editorial experience, passion for the topic and thousands of former contacts from the fields of behavioral and brain sciences to build Animal Sentience. The new journal is focused on exploring what animals feel and experience (rather than what they may be thinking). Animal Sentience is, like the Repository, also experiencing exponential growth (it reached 100,000 article downloads in calendar year 2020).
The WellBeing International Studies Repository would not be possible without the support from The Summerlee Foundation.