THE ANTI-DOPING KNOWLEDGE CENTRE
The Anti-Doping Knowledge Centre (ADKC) has proven its worth in recent years as the largest collection of doping-related documents in the world. Thanks to the support of our international umbrella organisation iNADO, it proved possible to further develop the Anti-Doping Knowledge Centre (ADKC) in 2018. More than 600 'records' have been added to the database and, in addition, existing documents are constantly checked and improved, in part on the basis of new relevant search terms. The total number of documents was 5,540 on 31 December 2018. At the beginning of the year, the addition of the 5,000th document was marked by a modest celebration.
Most of the database consists of legal documents, and in particular the motivated decisions of competent disciplinary committees for the imposition of doping sanctions. The majority are decisions of the sports tribunal CAS but, increasingly, the legal decisions of the disciplinary committees of international sports federations and national disciplinary bodies can also be found in the database. The decisions of a few dozen sports and countries are now being processed. In addition, contact is sought on a continuous basis with countries and sports that do not yet share their decisions. In 2018, the increasing number of CAS decisions about Russian athletes in particular and the increased transparency in athletics generated by the Athletics Integrity Unit (AIU) led to a steady growth in the number of legal decisions. The main objective of these efforts is to provide access to the available case law in the field of doping and therefore to provide a more robust basis for future decisions.
In addition, the website contains scientific articles on all conceivable doping topics, educational materials and all kinds of doping documents. In this way, the ADKC plays a historical role because outdated documents are generally difficult to find on the internet.
Visitors to the website come from all over the world. There was an increase in levels of interest from Russia, America and Canada in 2018. The target group of the ADKC consists of NADO and IF staff, the staff of other international organisations active in the field of doping (IOC, WADA, UNESCO, Council of Europe, European Union), journalists, lawyers, scientists, administrators and researchers, and finally athletes and athlete support staff (coaches, doctors, physiotherapists...).
The database is freely accessible through the website www.doping.nl.