RESEARCH4LIFE

The demand for scientific literature in developing countries had gone unfulfilled for many years with thousands of students, researchers and academics struggling to gain access to current scientific information. While students were unable to access the literature and acquire the knowledge they needed, researchers and academics were confronted with mounting difficulties in publishing their findings in peer-reviewed journals, updating their teaching curricula and identifying funding.

Research4Life is the collective name for three public-private partnerships which seek to help achieve the UN’s Millennium Development Goals by providing the developing world with access to critical scientific and social science research. Beginning in 2002, the three programmes: Health Access to Research Initiative (HINARI); Access to Global Online Research in Agriculture (AGORA); and Online Access to Research in the Environment (OARE), have given researchers at 4,500 institutions in 108 developing countries free or low cost access to over 7,000 journals provided by the world’s leading academic and professional publishers.

Since 2002, Research4Life programmes have bridged the knowledge gap and has impacted the research – and the lives – of those living in some of the world’s poorest countries. Research4Life is a public private partnership of the WHO, FAO, UNEP, Cornell and Yale Universities and the International Association of Scientific, Technical and Medical Publishers. Working together with technology partner Microsoft, the partnership’s goal is to help attain six of the UN’s eight Millennium Development Goals by 2015, reducing the scientific knowledge gap between industrialized countries and the developing world.