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http://www.research4life.org
Contact: info@research4life.org
Research4Life is the collective name for three programmes in which more than 150 publishers provide access to researchers, academics, students, doctors, agriculturalists, economists and other professionals in the developing world. For institutions in most countries where the Gross National Income per person is $1600 or less, access is entirely free. For institutions in countries where the annual GNI is between $1601 and $4700, a small fee is charged. The publishers donate any revenues collected in this way for training and outreach programmes.
In HINARI (Health InterNetwork Access to Research Initiative), sponsored by the World Health Organization, 4500 institutions in 108 countries have registered for access to some 7400 journals in biomedical research and healthcare and related subjects.
AGORA (Access to Global Online Research in Agriculture) is sponsored by the Food and Agriculture Organization. 45 publishers are providing access to more than 2500 journals through 2200 institutions.
In the latest Research4Life programme, OARE (Online Access to Research in the Environment), 2000 institutions have registered for access to more than 3500 journals from 60 publishers.
Over 75% of all the journals in the Research4Life programmes are published by publishers who are members of the International Association of Scientific, Technical and Medical Publishers (STM), and STM is a major sponsor of Research4Life.
Cornell University's Mann Library (agriculture) and Yale University Library are key partners in the programmes, providing much of the essential backroom and bibliographic infrastructure. Additionally, Yale's School of Forestry and Environmental Studies supports field work in OARE. Research4Life's lead technical partner is Microsoft, which supports many of the systems which make the programmes possible.
HINARI was launched in 2002, AGORA in 2003 and OARE in 2006. In 2006, two key reviews recommended the continuation of the programmes. They also recommended that they be linked with the United Nations Millennium Development Goals; the target date for the MDGs to be achieved is 2015 and the partners have agreed to continue to support Research4Life at least until then.
Usage of the content provided under Research4Life continues to grow: in the HINARI programme alone, logins increased by 16% in 2010 while page views nearly doubled to some 120 million.
Research4Life Partner Making a Difference Booklet available February 2012
Research4Life Partner Newsletter now available
New Reports for Research4Life - released 20 September 2010
Research4Life on YouTube
What do I get from STM? What we do
Research4Life programmes offer the participating publisher a systematic programme of on-site and web based training in discovery and use of your content
Partnership with respected UN agencies – WHO, FAO, and the United Nationas Environment Programme (UNEP)
Local country experts that validate access requests are from legitimate qualifying organisations
Dedicated detection of password misuse and effective remedial action
We are enhancing the value of Research4Life by launching programmes:
Enabling you to focus on specific market segments within each qualifying country
Offering you access to markets in physical sciences, engineering, and technology complementing our established biomedical based programmes
Partnering with Microsoft providing videos for you and stakeholders seeing how their content is bringing benefits to developing country communities
2010’s video provides a vivid demonstration of the value that AGORA access has brought to farming in Burkina Faso
2011’s forthcoming video providing graphic insight into the benefits that the HINARI training programme brings to its participants.
Developed a competition with Microsoft encouraging students to create a download manager enabling users with poor internet connections to resume interrupted downloads - your content will become more readily available to users whose access has been limited by poor internet connections.
And more benefits of R4Life:
Collective marketing on your behalf – promotional competitions, outreach to international and local journalists, and regular communication with end-users and libraries to promote awareness of your content.
In 2011 organised an end-user competition eliciting feedback on how your content is proving to be invaluable to users - feeding back the most impressive entries so that you can demonstrate to editors and sponsoring societies the benefits of your outreach