Leah Kinthaert

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. The collective name for the four programmes – HINARI, AGORA, OARE and ARDI - Research4Life provides developing countries with free or low cost access to academic and professional peer-reviewed content online. Research4Life is a public-private partnership of the WHO, FAO, UNEP, WIPO, Cornell and Yale Universities and the International Association of Scientific, Technical & 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.