Bridging the Digital Divide

[Emily.Gillingham@oxon.blackwellpublishing.com]

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