Guest Post: Resources for Accessing Literature (Part 1 of 2)

[Note: This post is from Anne Powell, who works in information delivery at INASP. Thank you, Anne! –Barbara]

In the AuthorAID discussion list, recent topics have included access to scientific literature. In this blog post, I’ll summarize some literature-access options for users in developing countries. Next week I’ll note some options also available to others.

Research4Life is the collective name for AGORA, HINARI, and OARE, which offer free or low-cost access:  

• AGORA: The AGORA program, set up by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN (FAO) together with major publishers, enables developing countries to access an outstanding digital library collection in the fields of food, agriculture, environmental science, and related social sciences. AGORA provides a collection of 1900 journals.
• HINARI: The HINARI Programme, set up by the World Health Organization (WHO) together with major publishers, enables developing countries to gain access to one of the world's largest collections of biomedical and health literature. More than 7,000 journal titles are now available.
• OARE (Online Access to Research in the Environment): OARE, an international public-private consortium coordinated by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), Yale University, and leading science and technology publishers, enables developing countries to gain access to one of the world's largest collections of environmental science research. More than 2,990 peer-reviewed titles owned and published by more than 340 prestigious publishing houses and scholarly societies are now available.

PERii, INASP's Programme for the Enhancement of Research Information, works with more than 50 publishers and aggregators to make their resources available within our partner and network countries. To see which resources are available to your country and to find the contact details for your country coordinator, go to www.inasp.info and use the box "Where We Work" to select your country.

More next week!