Research4Life
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 $1250, access is entirely free. For institutions in countries where the annual GNI is between $1251 and $3500, 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), http://www.who.int/hinari/en/
sponsored by the World Health Organization, 3700 institutions in 108 have registered for access to more than 6,300 journals in biomedical research and healthcare and related subjects.
AGORA (Access to Global Online Research in Agriculture) http://www.aginternetwork.org/en/ is sponsored by the Food and Agriculture Organization. 45 publishers are providing access to 1278 journals through 1708 institutions.
In the latest Research4Life programme, OARE (Online Access to Research in the Environment), http://www.oaresciences.org/en/ 1460 institutions have registered for access to 2967 journals from 59 publishers. More than 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, 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. 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.
It is estimated that in 2008, more than 5.5 Million articles were downloaded in the HINARI programme alone.
