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[Gillingham.Emily@lists.yale.edu]

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 Hopital General 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
s.tabachnikoff@elsevier.com