BRIDGING THE DIGITAL DIVIDE: PUBLISHERS COMMIT TO BRING FREE AND LOW COST ACCESS TO CRITICAL RESEARCH TO DEVELOPING WORLD

WHO, FAO, UNEP, Yale, Cornell and More Than 100 STM Publishing Partners Extend Commitment Until 2015

Microsoft Joins Efforts as Technology Partner

WASHINGTON, DC - Many developing countries lack access to the information and training that can help save lives, improve the quality of life, and assist with economic development. To address this disparity, more than 100 publishers, three UN organizations, two major universities, and Microsoft announced the extension of programs that provide free or almost free access to online subscriptions of peer-reviewed journals.  Information technology leader Microsoft announced its support of technical assistance to enhance access to online research for scientists, policymakers, and librarians in the developing world.

The three sister programs - HINARI (Health InterNetwork Access to Research Initiative), AGORA (Access to Global Online Research in Agriculture) and OARE (Online Access to Research in the Environment) - provide research access to journals focusing on health, agriculture and the environment, respectively to more than 100 of the world's poorest countries.  All three of the programs will now have official commitment from the partners until 2015, marking the target for reaching the Millennium Development Goals.

While addressing the Pan American Health Organization in December 2002, Kofi Annan described HINARI as "using information technology to narrow the information gap in health science."

Derk Haank, CEO of Springer Science+Business Media, said, "Publishers are proud to be able to provide scientists, researchers and policymakers in the developing world with the tools necessary to advance their work and hope these programs will truly make a difference."

As the initiative's only technology partner, Microsoft is providing a new system for access and authentication enabling secure and effective use of the programs in developing countries. Through these enhanced features provided under the Intelligent Application Gateway (IAG) 2007 as part of the Microsoft Forefront Security products, the system will be able to meet expanded demand and perform at the standards of today's most heavily trafficked websites

In a World Health Organization (WHO) survey conducted in 2000, researchers and academics in developing countries ranked access to subscription based journals as one of their most pressing problems.  In countries with per capita income of less than USD $1000 per annum, 56 percent of academic institutions surveyed had no current subscriptions to international journals.

"HINARI-AGORA-OARE removes many of the barriers that we in the developing world have been facing in accessing published literature," said, Dr. Mohamed Jalloh, Consultant Urologist, at the Hôpital Général de Grand Yoff in Dakar, Senegal. "These programs have the great potential to improve health, education training and research in remote areas all around the world. They have drastically improved the way we work at the hospital."

The public-private partnerships of these three programs have already resulted in:

*       A strengthened intellectual foundation for universities, enabling faculty to develop evidence-based curricula, perform research on a par with peers in industrialized countries, develop their own publishing record, and enable students to conduct research and seek education in new and emerging scientific fields;
*       More science-driven public policies and regulatory frameworks;
*       Greater capacity for organizations to gather and disseminate to the public new scientific knowledge in the medical, agricultural and environmental sciences and deliver improved services;
*       Increased participation of experts from developing countries in international scientific and policy debates; and
*       A greater movement toward library patronage at universities and an enhancement of the status of libraries.

Representatives from the World Health Organization, the Food and Agriculture Organization, the UN Environmental Programme, and leading science and technology publishers, together with representatives from Cornell and Yale Universities, met today in Washington DC to officially extend their cooperation to 2015, in line with the UN's MDGs.

About HINARI
(HEALTH INTERNETWORK ACCESS TO RESEARCH INITIATIVE) [http://www.who.int/hinari], launched in 2002 under the leadership of the World Health Organization (WHO), with technical assistance from Yale University Library, enables developing countries to gain access to one of the world's largest collections of biomedical and health literature. Over 3750 journal titles are now available to health institutions in 107 countries, benefiting many thousands of health workers and researchers, and in turn, contributing to improved world health.

About AGORA
(ACCESS TO GLOBAL ONLINE RESEARCH IN AGRICULTURE) [http://www.aginternetwork.org], initiated in 2003 and led by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN (FAO) with support from the Mann Library, Cornell University, together with major publishers, enables developing countries to gain access to an outstanding digital library collection in the fields of food, agriculture, environmental science and related social sciences. AGORA provides a collection of 958 journals to institutions in 107 countries. AGORA is designed to enhance the scholarship of the many thousands of students, faculty and researchers in agriculture and life sciences in the developing world.

About OARE
(ONLINE ACCESS TO RESEARCH IN THE ENVIRONMENT) [http://www.oaresciences.org], an international public-private consortium introduced in 2006 by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), Yale University Library and School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, and leading science and technology publishers, enables developing countries to gain free access to one of the world's largest collections of environmental science literature. Over 1,300 scientific journal titles owned and published by over 300 prestigious publishing houses, scholarly societies, and scientific associations are now available in 70 low income countries. Another 37 countries will be added by 2008.

Media Contact:
Shira Tabachnikoff
Elsevier
Tel: +31 20 485 2736
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