Bepress aims through its organizational and technological innovations
to improve scholarly communication; to enhance the interaction among
authors, editors, and readers; and to enable editors to produce scholarly
materials without assistance or delays.
Berkeley Electronic Press presents a dual-pronged approach to the
problems scholars face in disseminating their work community-based
solutions in the form of their own peer-reviewed journals, and
university-based solutions in the form of bepress's technology
licensing. Taken collectively, they present a broad suite of alternatives
for an academic community besieged by the high cost and slow speed of
scholarly communication.
Best of Science: http://bestofscience.free.fr/
"Best of Science" is a free-access scientific publication of preprints
and peer-reviewed publications. Best of Science authors pay for the
reviewing and publishing process. Fees are low and especially adapted to
respond to the geographical origins of authors. Details not available at
present (January 2002).
Bioline International:
http://www.bioline.org.br/
Bioline International is managed by scientists and librarians. It is a
collaborative initiative of the University of Toronto Libraries, Canada
(management office), the Reference Center on Environmental Information,
Brazil (host computer and software development) and Bioline/UK (liaison).
Bioline International is a not-for-profit electronic publishing service
committed to providing access to quality research journals published in
developing countries. BI's goal of educing the South to North knowledge
gap is crucial to a global understanding of health (tropical medicine,
infectious diseases, epidemiology, emerging new diseases), biodiversity,
the environment, conservation and international development. With
peer-reviewed journals from Brazil, Cuba, India, Indonesia, Kenya, South
Africa, Uganda, Zimbabwe and more to come, BI provides a unique service by
making bioscience information generated in these countries available to
the international research community world-wide.
BioMed
Central:
http://www.biomedcentral.com
The full-text articles published in all BioMed Central primary
journals are freely available to developing countries, without any
exception (and to any developed countries, as well). Articles may be
freely downloaded and stored or distributed further without prior
permission for any non-commercial purpose, provided that the original
author and publisher are acknowledged properly. Totally unfettered access
is offered; not even registration is needed, although registration is
appreciated.
The articles are obtained via www.biomedcentral.com In order to sustain
this full open access, article processing charges ($500) are levied on the
author('s institution) but a very generous waiver policy is applied to
those who genuinely lack funds, e.g. authors from developing countries.
Also, institutional memberships are available from January 2002, at highly
preferential rates to institutions from developing countries, which, amomg
other things, provide high visibility for the member institutions via the
BioMed Central web site. Details to be found on
www.biomedcentral.com.
Chicago Emerging Nations Initiative (CENI): http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/CENI
The Chicago Emerging Nations Initiative ensures that readers at higher education
institutions in more than 110 low- and lower-middle-income nations receive access to
vital journals content in a wide range of disciplines. Participation in CENI --
which provides both print subscriptions and electronic access -- will replace the
University of Chicago Press' B rates, greatly expanding the number of journals
available for free or little cost to institutions in low- and lower-middle-income
nations. Individual scholars in emerging nations remain eligible for a discount to
the individual subscription price. Organizations providing journal content
published by the University of Chicago Press to eligible institutions in developing
nations include Access to Global Online Research in Agriculture (AGORA), founded by
the United Nation's Food and Agriculture Organization; the Association of
Commonwealth Universities Low-Cost Journals Scheme; the Health InterNetwork Access
to Research Initiative (HINARI), sponsored by the World Health Organization; JSTOR's
Open Africa Initiative; and the New School for Social Research's Journals Donation
Program.
E-BioSci: http://www.e-biosci.org/
E-BioSci is a service of EMBO, the European Molecular Biology
Organization. It is a a European platform for access and retrieval of
full text and factual information in the Life Sciences. It networks
online journals and life science databases. A prototype is currently
available.
eIFL (Electronic Information for Libraries): http://www.eifl.net
The EIFL (Electronic Information for Libraries) Project aims to
facilitate affordable access to electronic scholarly journals databases
for libraries and their users in countries in transition. The project
started in October 1999 as a joint initiative of the Open Society
Institute and EBSCO Publishing, providing country-wide access to thousands
of titles in social sciences, humanities, business and management by
libraries in nearly 40 countries of the Soros Foundations' network.
Content offerings are currently being expanded into science, technology
and medical journals. In order to ensure sustainability of the project,
eIFL is also offering various other programs that support the building and
enhancement of local library consortia in participating countries.
eJDS - eJournals Delivery Service:
http://www.ejds.org
The electronic Journals Delivery Service (eJDS) of the Abdus Salam
International Centre for Theoretical Physics
(ICTP) is a prototype programme
geared to facilitate the access to current scientific literature via e-mail
free of cost. The eJDS is made possible through agreements with several
important scientific publishing companies and societies, who provide access
to their eJournals for free in the fields of Physics and Mathematics. The
goal is to distribute individual scientific articles via e-mail to scientists
in institutions in Developing Countries who do not have access to sufficient
bandwidth to download material from the internet and/or cannot afford the
connection.
Electronic Publishing Trust for Development: http://www.epublishingtrust.org/
The Electronic Publishing Trust for Development (EPT) was established
in 1996 to facilitate open access to the world's scholarly literature and
to support the electronic publication of reviewed bioscience journals from
countries experiencing difficulties with traditional publication.
The Trust is aware of the problems faced by scientists and publishers
in many countries both in accessing the world's research information and
in gaining high enough visibility for their publications and research
output because of printing and distribution costs. This can result in an
unwillingness by regional scientists to publish in journals that have poor
circulation levels. The outcome is the loss of much important scientific
information that either remains unavailable to the international
scientific community or suffers long delays in publication.
The Trust is focusing on the biological sciences, which in the fields
of medicine, biodiversity, microbiology, environmental, and agricultural
sciences is of paramount global importance. Local scientific information
is critical, particularly in the case of human, animal and plant disease
surveillance and conservation.
The main activities of the EPT are to provide awareness of the benefits
of electronic publishing; transfer e-publishing technology through
training and other online resources; and provide management and
distribution support.
ExtraMED Biomedical Periodicals Library:
http://www.iwsp.org/extraMed.htm
From the ExtraMED web site: ExtraMED is the only large-scale effort to
provide electronic versions of biomedical research information from the
South to make its way to the North (reversing the usual process) as well
as to the South. It represents an act of validation, and an assertion of
information equity.
The ExtraMED database contains the full text, as page images, of over
300
Third World biomedical journals. Ten CD-ROM disks are issued each
production year, and indexes cumulate. Over 20,000 articles had been
included in ExtraMED by January 2000. Taking its name from the fact that
it comprises journals that are ^Qextra^R to MEDLINE, ExtraMED focuses on
journals that are largely excluded from the international indexes. The
ExtraMED Consortium of Journals was originally selected through WHO^Rs
various Index Medicus projects. It is thus by far the largest source of
full text biomedical literature from developing countries.
The project was conceived as a way of helping Third World biomedical
journals to 1) achieve visibility among the international biomedical
literature (they are almost entirely excluded from the major indexes --
only some 3% of the journals in MEDLINE are from the South -- hence the
name ExtraMED) and 2) earn some income (the journals do not pay anything
to be included in ExtraMED, and they share the revenues). ExtraMED is
designed to serve the purposes of promoting the literature of developing
countries, while subsidising its production and development through
subscription revenue. At the same time it provides a powerful research and
diagnostic tool.
The best 300 biomedical journals published throughout the Third World
have
been selected from WHO^Rs Index Medicus projects. All the articles from
every journal included have been scanned and stored as page images
(including all the photographs, diagrams, etc.). All of the titles,
bibliographic data, keywords and abstracts have been rekeyed to allow for
full-text searching of these elements, making use of state-of-the-art
database software. This is necessary, since ExtraMED mainly carries
journals that are not indexed anywhere else: the only way users can
discover what has been published is by searching the disk.
FreeForAll:
http://www.geocities.com/wfb_2/freeforall.html
FreeForAll was launched in October 2004 to provide free digital access to
health journals for users in developing countries. The service is offered
by an international consortium of libraries --so far, 34 libraries from 17
countries. FreeForAll delivers articles as PDFs, sometimes scanned from
faxes, and makes use of existing document delivery services and ILL
protocols. The costs are borne by the participating libraries.
GDN Journal Service: http://www.gdnet.org/online_services/journals/gdn_journal_services/index.html
GDN works with partners to provide researchers working in developing
countries with free access to a range of journals services through GDNet.
The Global Development Network (GDN) is a global network of research and
policy institutes working together to address the problems of national and
regional development. GDN:
- Supports multidisciplinary research in social sciences
- Promotes the generation of local knowledge in developing and
transition
countries
- Produces policy relevant knowledge on a global scale
- Builds research capacity to advance development and alleviate poverty
- Facilitates knowledge sharing among researchers and policymakers
- Disseminates development knowledge to the public and policymakers
HighWire Press: http://highwire.stanford.edu/lists/devecon.dtl
The site offers the following information: "The below journals
offer free online access to all countries that appear in the World Bank's
list of 'low income economies,' plus Djibouti. You do not need to
sign up for this service as our software automatically detects the country
you are connecting from and grants access accordingly." Additionally,
the site contains over 350,000 articles from high quality peer reviewed
biomedical journals that are available for free to all readers.
Stanford University Libraries' HighWire Press began in early 1995 with
the online production of the weekly Journal of Biological Chemistry (JBC),
the most highly cited (and second largest) peer-reviewed journal.
Scientists and societies rapidly saw the potential for new forms and features
of scientific communication, and Science and Proceedings of the National
Academy of Sciences soon joined JBC online. HighWire now (December 2001)
produces 298 sites online, with many more planned.
HINARI: see under World Health
Organization below.
ICSU-UNESCO:
http://bestofscience.free.fr/icsu.html
Joint declaration of the International Council for Science and the
United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization supporting
broad and free access to scientific information in the developing world.
INASP: www.inasp.info
INASP is a co-operative network of partners aiming to improve world-wide
access to information. It was established in 1992 by the International
Council for Science (ICSU) as a programme of the Committee for the Dissemination
of Scientific Information (CDSI)/ICSU Press.
Its stated objectives are:
-
to map, support and strengthen existing activities promoting access to
and dissemination of scientific and scholarly information and knowledge;
-
to identify, encourage and support new initiatives that will increase local
publication and general access to quality scientific and scholarly literature;
and
-
to promote in-country capacity building in information production, organization,
access and dissemination.
Of particular relevance to this site is INASP's PERI initiative,
Programme for the Enhancement of Research Information. Component
1 Acquisition of international scholarly information through application
of electronic ICTs offers the following:
Since September 2000 INASP has been successfully negotiating for the
provision of differentially-priced information resources. Developed in
collaboration with researchers and librarians, and with the support of
development programmes such as ENRECA (Danida) and Sida:SAREC, this
component presently provides access to over 5000 full-text online journals
in science, technology, medicine, social science and the humanities from
Academic (Elsevier), Blackwell Publishers, The Cochrane Library, EBSCO
Publishing, Mary Ann Liebert and Munksgaard; and to databases from EBSCO
and SilverPlatter and document delivery through the British Library and
'subito'.
In the first instance, members of universities and research
institutions
and professionals in Ghana, Malawi, Mozambique, Tanzania, Uganda and
Zambia were invited to forward their names, affiliations and full contact
details to INASP in exchange for full details about accessing the content.
This opportunity was extended to Kenya, Sri Lanka, Vietnam and Zimbabwe
and a wide range of countries in Africa, Asia and Central and Latin
America will be added throughout 2002.
INASP has just launched 'INASP Health Links' - a Gateway to selected
Web sites and Internet resources that will be of special interest to
health professionals, medical library communities, publishers, and NGOs in
developing and transitional countries at
http://www.inasp.info/links/health/
InfoMed: http://www.cubasolidarity.net/infomed.html
InfoMed is the computer net of the National System of Health
Information of the Ministry of Health in Cuba. It has been operational
since 1992.
Goals: To facilitate the exchange of electronic information in the
field of medicine, biomedicine and health in general. Intends to
facilitate linkages between professionals, academicians, researchers,
functionaries and Public Health workers in general in Cuba and abroad.
Linkages: InfoMed is linked to the key nodules of the Cuban E-Mail Net
and with the X.25 Net of the Cuban Academy of Sciences. For international
e- mail it is connected to PeaceNet, allowing e-mail exchange with the
world nets, including INTERNET and Satellife. With the exception of these
international e-mail services, we lack direct connection with INTERNET.
Users: Currently InfoMed provides services to users throughout the
country with great possibilities of growth, only limited by the lack of
equipment in the health institutions, given that the interest in the
service health care workers is enormous.
Up to now there are approximately 500 open accounts, 80% of which are
of collective use in health institutions of Cuba. This makes the estimates
of users harder to make. The amount of information traveling through the
net is continuously increasing and currently the daily average is 14 MB.
For more information, contact CNICM:
Centro Nacional de Informacion de Ciencias Medicas
27 # 110 e/ M y N. Vedado. CP 10400. Ciudad de La Habana, Cuba
Tel: (537) 321991 Fax: (537) 333063
Email: urra@infomed.sld.cu
Iraq Virtual Science Library: https://www.ivsl.org
A multinational partnership including the National Academies of Science
and Engineering, Sun Microsystems, AGORA, HINARI, and Springer are
are sponsoring the establishment of an Iraq Virtual Science Library
to provide Iraqi Scientists and Academicians with access to
important journals in medicine, engineering and physical sciences.
The participating institutions whose members will be able
to use the service include:
- Ministry of Science and Technology
- Ministry of Higher Education & Scientific Research
- Ministry of Health
- Ministry of Environment
- Ministry of Water Resources
- Ministry of Agriculture
- Ministry of Industry and Minerals
- Ministry of Oil
- Ministry of Electricity
- University of Baghdad
- Al-Nahrain University
- University of Technology
- Mustansireyah University
- Basrah University
- Sulamaneyah University
- Mosul University
Journal Server Trust: http://www.journalserver.org
The Journal Server Trust is an Oxford-based international initiative to
create a high quality freeware digital library (JournalServer.org) with
the strategic collaboration of leading universities across the
world. Through this, the Trust hopes to revive the spirit of non-profit
academic publishing, in a way that would particularly benefit the low and
middle-income countries of the world.
National Academies Press: http://www.nap.edu
The National Academies now offer free online access in more than 100
developing countries to the reports of the Academies, as well as to
journal articles from the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
(PNAS). The goal is to help developing countries tackle challenges such as
disease, hunger, and economic transition with enhanced scientific
knowledge. Since January 2002, PNAS has offered developing countries free
online access to the research articles, commentaries, and reviews
published in the journal, which are now available free of charge in more
than 130 countries, listed at
http://www.pnas.org/misc/faq.shtml#developing. The National Academies
Press (NAP) now allows readers in most developing countries to obtain
Academies reports free from the NAP Web site in portable document format
(PDF). Eligible nations are listed at
http://www.nap.edu/info/faq_dc_pdf.html. In the first two months of
this
year, NAP gave away 15,600 books and 6,500 individual chapters to people
in these nations. In addition, NAP's site will soon feature special
"subject portals" on topics such as drought and water sciences, which are
of particular interest in the developing world.
National Bureau of Economic Research: http://www.nber.org/
The NBER is a private, nonprofit, nonpartisan research organization
dedicated to promoting a greater understanding of how the economy
works. Our research is conducted by more than 600 university professors
around the country, the leading scholars in their fields.
The NBER sells subscriptions to its online working paper series but
offers free service to residents of developing countries and transition
economies. Natural-resource rich countries are not on the
free-distribution list.
NBER provides a list of the country-code domains currently eligible for
free downloads of NBER working papers. If your computer is in one of
these domains, you should be offered a download on the bibliographic page
for the paper. If that doesn't happen, it is probably because your
network does not support Reverse Name Lookup . Without that facility on
your network, NBER can't learn what your domain name is. However,
selecting on the `Information for subscribers and others expecting free
downloads' link offers the opportunity to provide to NBER your e-mail
address, and NBER will email you a URL for the paper.
Further details are available
at: http://www.nber.org/help/dcte.html
New England Journal of Medicine:
http://www.nejm.org/custserv/lowinc.asp
The New England Journal of Medicine is made available to certain countries
under its "Access for Low-Income Countries" program. The list of over 100
countries on their web site was derived primarily from a World Bank list.
Users from these countries will be recognized automatically by their IP
addresses and allowed access to full text without charge.
Online Access to Research in the Environment (OARE) http://www.oaresciences.org/en/
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 free access to one of the
world's largest collections of environmental science literature.
Over one thousand scientific journal titles owned and published by over
200 prestigious publishing houses, scholarly societies, and scientific
associations are now available in 70 low income countries. Another 36
countries will be added by 2008. Research is provided in a wide range of
disciplines, including biotechnology, botany, climate change, ecology,
energy, environmental chemistry, environmental economics, environmental
engineering and planning, environmental law and policy, environmental
toxicology and pollution, geography, geology, hydrology, meteorology,
oceanography, urban planning, zoology, and many others.
Open Africa (JSTOR): http://www.jstor.org/about/africa/openafrica.html
As part of JSTOR's mission to create an archive of scholarly literature and
extend access to the archive as broadly as possible, we are proud to announce
that JSTOR has adopted a plan to waive participation fees for any academic
or not-for-profit institution on the continent of Africa. This plan affects
new participants, as well as institutions that currently participate
in JSTOR.
Program highlights:
- Access will be for the entire JSTOR archive, including all content added to
the archive during the period of participation. Information about each collection
may be found at Currently Available Collections
and Journals.
- Access to JSTOR is provided via the Internet, using IP addresses that are
authorized at the institution to have that access. An institution must have stable
IP addresses in order to participate in this program. JSTOR will not be offering
password-based access to Open Africa participants.
- Open Africa participants are required to take the JSTOR Network Performance Test prior to becoming
participants so they are aware of any difficulties they may have in accessing the
archive.
- Current JSTOR participants will receive a pro-rated refund for any fees paid
to JSTOR in 2006, with participation fees waived from that point forward. Annual
Access Fees paid in 2006 will be refunded on a prorated basis from July 1, and
Archive Capital Fees paid in 2006 will be refunded fully. Fees paid to JSTOR prior
to 2006 will not be refunded.
- JSTOR will be waiving the standard access fees (the Archive Capital Fee and
the Annual Access Fee) to the archive to any institution from a country on the
continent of Africa.
- Participation fees will be waived for a minimum of three years, and will
remain waived for as long as economic conditions in the institutions and within the
country dictate, at which point JSTOR will evaluate whether conditions or
circumstances have changed significantly enough to warrant a change in policy.
For more information about JSTOR's Open Africa Program, please contact participation@jstor.org.
Oxford University Press Journals: http://www.oxfordjournals.org
Oxford
Journals will continue to offer developing countries free (or greatly discounted)
online access to many of our journals. Further information, including a list of
countries that qualify for free or reduced access in 2008, can be found at
http://www.oxfordjournals.org/access_purchase/developing_countries_list. html
.
Please note that in 2008 we will be basing our list of qualifying countries on 2006
World Bank Reports (and in 2009 on 2007 World Bank Reports).
patientINFORM http://www.patientinform.com
patientINFORM is a free online service that provides patients and their
caregivers access to some of the most up-to-date, reliable, and important research
available about the diagnosis and treatment of specific diseases. Here, consumers
have the ability to not only read the latest research, but also to find help
interpreting that information and accessing additional materials. By making it
easier to understand research findings, patientINFORM empowers healthcare consumers
to have improved discussions with their physicians and make informed decisions about
care. This service aggregates and provides access to content from multiple sources.
Ptolemy Project: http://www.ptolemy.ca
"Based at the University of Toronto, the Ptolemy Project aims to bridge
the current digital divide in access to full text health information and
to link surgical researchers from around the world with the extraordinary
resources of the University of Toronto Library, North America's 4th largest
research library."
PubMed Central:
http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov
PubMed Central is a digital archive of life sciences journal literature
managed by the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) at the
U. S. National Library of Medicine (NLM). It is not a journal
publisher. Access to PubMed Central (PMC) is free and unrestricted. As
of 1/26/2001, 17 journals were listed as "forthcoming" and the following
journals were available in whole or in part through PMC:
Arthritis Research
BMC titiles
British Medical Journal
Breast Cancer Research
Bulletin of the Medical Library Association
Critical Care
Current Controlled Trials in Cardiovascular Medicine
Genome Biology
Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association
Molecular Biology of the Cell
Plant Physiology
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States
of America
Respiratory Research
The Royal College of Psychiatrists: http://www.rcpsych.org/
We have enabled free online access to all three of our journals (the
British Journal of Psychiatry, the Psychiatric Bulletin, and Advances in
Psychiatric Treatment) across 75 countries, collated from the World Bank
list of lowest income countries and the OECD list of countries qualifying
for Official Development Assistance based on per capita GNP. Any
institution or individual in these countries should be able to access the
online journals, as the system is based on recognition of IP addresses
based on those areas.
In collaboration with other HighWire publishers, we are also
participating in a joint bid to eIFL (run by the Soros Foundation), which
offers free or highly discounted online access to institutions in a number
of countries. This is still pending.
Countries in the program: Albania, Angola, Armenia,
Azerbaijan,
Bangladesh, Benin, Bhutan, Bosnia, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cambodia,
Cameroon, Cape Verde, Central African Republic, Chad, Comoros, Congo,
Democratic Republic of Congo, Costa Rica, Cote D'ivoire, Cuba, Djibouti,
Dominica, Dominican Rep, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Gambia, Georgia, Ghana,
Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Haiti, Honduras, Indonesia, Iraq, Kenya, Democratic
People's Republic of Korea, Kosovo, Kyrgyzstan, Lao People's Democratic
Republic, Lesotho, Liberia, Madagascar, Malawi, Mali, Mauritania, Republic
of Moldova, Mongolia, Montenegro, Mozambique, Myanmar, Nepal, Nicaragua,
Niger, Nigeria, Rwanda, Sao Tome And Principe, Senegal, Sierra Leone,
Solomon Islands, Somalia, Sudan, Tajikistan, Tanzania, Togo, Turkmenistan,
Uganda, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Viet Nam, Yemen, Yugoslavia, Zambia,
Zimbabwe
Royal Society of Chemistry:
(From BBC News, 3/1/6): The Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) has announced that it
will give Africa free access to its journal archives. A total of 1.5 million pages and
250,000 articles will be available electronically to African scientists. At the launch
of the initiative, an Ethiopian researcher called on other chemistry journals to open
their archives free-of-charge, too. Hareg Tadesse said: "It is not about only me, and
only Africa - the whole of the developing world needs supporting." The Archives for
Africa scheme was launched on Tuesday at the House of Commons. "Access to scientific
information is an essential ingredient for the establishment of a sustainable science
base," said Dr Simon Campbell, the president of the RSC. "We believe that free access to
the RSC Archive will make a major contribution towards building scientific capacity,
which African leaders have stated is essential for social and economic development." The
decision to open access to the journals followed the recent G8 meeting in Gleneagles,
Scotland, which highlighted the need for capacity building in developing countries in
science and technology. Hareg Tadesse, a chemist from Ethiopia, who attended the launch,
believes her research has benefited from access to the journals. "In order to do my
work, I needed to know the results from previous research. And it was really hard in
Addis for me to get hold of the right papers. This is where the archives are going to be
so useful," she explained....However, to aid African research, she said more scientific
journals needed to give free access to their papers. "I would like to call on all
publishers of chemistry journals to follow the lead of the RSC to support young chemists
like me with their archives so that we can bring the benefits of chemistry to our great
continent," she added.
SateLLife:
http://www.healthnet.org/whatwedo.php;
http://www.healthnet.org/medpub.php
Sadly, many health professionals in developing countries do not have
access to current information and research that is vital for diagnosis,
treatment and care of disease. Empowering them to deliver better health
care in their communities, SATELLIFE:
-- Connects health professionals in remote areas to critical
information resources.
-- Enables health professionals to share
information on relevant health issues.
-- Trains health workers in the use of information technology
tools.
-- Distributes current, peer-reviewed medical and public health
content to health practitioners in the developing world.
Access to relevant, reliable and current health information is
essential to the practice of health care To address this need, SATELLIFE
has forged relationships with reputable content providers, including
medical publishers and international development organizations, to offer a
series of publications featuring clinical and public health
information. Available at no charge to health professionals living in the
developing world, SATELLIFE's content is selected from over 40
peer-reviewed medical journals.
SciDev: http://www.scidev.net
SciDev.Net is a free-access, Internet-based network devoted to
reporting on and discussing those aspects of modern science and
technology that are relevant to sustainable development and the social
and economic needs of developing countries.
The project is based on the premise that those who stand to benefit
most from modern science and technology are also those who have least
access to information about it. Such individuals are therefore left
ill-equipped to take part in discussions about science- and
technology-related issues that profoundly affect their lives.
Our goal is to provide a focal point for both authoritative information
and informed debate on these issues. By doing so, SciDev.Net seeks to
empower both individuals and communities in developing countries,
increasing their ability to ensure the effective contribution of science
and technology to sustainable development, and thus to the general
improvement of health and economic well-being.
SciELO (Scientific
Electronic Library
Online): http://www.scielo.br
The Scientific Electronic Library Online - SciELO is an electronic
virtual library covering a selected collection of Brazilian scientific
journals. The library is an integral part of a project being developed by
FAPESP - Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo, in
partnership with BIREME - the Latin American and Caribbean Center on
Health Sciences Information. The FAPESP-BIREME Project envisages the
development of a common methodology for the preparation, storage,
dissemination and evaluation of scientific literature in electronic
format. As the project develops, new journal titles will be added in the
library collection.
The objective of the site is to implement an electronic virtual
library, providing full access to a collection of serial titles, a
collection of issues from individual serial titles, as well as to the full
text of articles. The access to both serial titles and articles is
available via indexes and search forms.
SIGMOD/VLDB DIGITAL LIBRARY DONATION PROGRAM:
http://pike.ewha.ac.kr/sigmod-dvd
ACM SIGMOD and the VLDB Foundation have established a joint program to
donate database literature to universities in developing countries, with
the goal of assisting in the expansion of the database community in those
countries. Currently available literature includes SIGMOD's Silver Edition
and the SIGMOD 2003 DiSC, both on DVDs. The Silver Edition is a
comprehensive collection of 30 years of database research literature and
related materials; the complete table of contents for the Silver Edition
can be found at http://www.informatik.uni-trier.de/~ley/db/anthology.html.
The 2003 DiSC contains the proceedings of many database research
conferences that took place in 2002, plus database research journal issues
from that year and other related materials; see
http://sigmod.discgenesis.net/ for the complete table of contents. A
request for a donation should be made by visiting our website
(http://pike.ewha.ac.kr/sigmod-dvd) and filling out an application form.
Soros/Open Society Initiative.
For a preliminary announcement about the Soros Initiative to bring free
or low-cost access to hundreds of electronic science and technology journals
to readers in economically disadvantaged countries, see the July 17, 2001
press release on this topic: http://www.library.yale.edu/~llicense/ListArchives/0107/msg00056.html
TEEAL -- The Essential Electronic Agricultural Library: http://www.teeal.org/
TEEAL is an annually updated collection of the world's most important
scientific journals in the field of agriculture. Journal issues start
from 1993 and updates are produced annually.
TEEAL is an offline library, initially available as a CD-ROM set and
more recently on an external hard drive for operation and access on a
local area network (LAN). It is available at well below cost to 109
of the lowest-income food deficit countries, as listed in the World
Bank's 1998-9 World Development Report. A number of donor agencies
have supported TEEAL set purchases though many sets are also
self-funded by institutions.
TEEAL has been called a "Library in a Box." It contains over 140
journals selected by 600 scientists from around the world as the most
essential to research and education in: Rural Development,
Sustainable Agriculture, Natural Resources, Environment, Food
Processing, Veterinary Medicine, Range Management, Agricultural
Engineering, Crop Development, Animal Management, Pest Control,
Economics, Soil Science, Nutrition, Forestry. The project is managed
out of A. R. Mann Library at Cornell University.
University of Chicago Press
According to Kate Duff, Special Projects Manager (1/24/2002), the
University of Chicago Press, the Press participates in a couple of
programs that provide selected journal content as part of a CD database or
electronic newsletter that is distributed to institutes in developing
nations: SateLLife (contact: Leela McCullough, hnet@usa.healthnet.org) and
The Essential Electronic Agricultural Library (TEEAL) (contact:
teeal@cornell.edu).
Virtual Health Library
http://www.bireme.br/bvs/I/ihome.htm
(Latin America and the Caribbean)
BIREME's mission is to contribute to the development of the health in
the countries of the Latin America and the Caribbean by promoting the use
of health scientific and technical information. The Virtual Health
Library is envisioned as the broad of scientific and technical knowledge
based in health-entered, organized, and stored in electronic format in the
countries of the Region, universally accessible on the Internet and
compatible with international databases.
The Virtual Health Library is simulated in a virtual space on the
Internet and consists of a collection or network of health information
sources in the Region. Users from different levels and locations will be
able to interact and navigate in the space of one or more information
sources, regardless of their physical location. The information sources
are generated, updated, stored, and manipulated on the Internet by
producers, integrators, and intermediaries, in a decentralized manner
using common methodologies for their integration into the Virtual Health
Library.
WiderNet (University of Iowa.
http://www.widernet.org:
The eGranary Digital Library puts millions of documents instantly at the
fingertips of scholars in developing countries without using an Internet connection.
Since few schools in the developing world have adequate connections to the Internet,
and those that do spend enormous amounts of money for slow and unreliable
connections, the eGranary Digital Library stores huge amounts of information on hard
drives inside a school's internal network. It contains books, websites, journals,
movies and audio files from hundreds of contributing authors and publishers who
freely contribute to help bridge the digital divide.
World Health Organization. Health InterNetwork:
http://www.healthinternetwork.net
In July 2001, Dr. Gro Harlem
Brundtland, Director-General of the World Health Organization, convened a
press conference to announce a joint WHO-publisher initiative aimed at
fostering to developing nations free or nearly free access to a number of
the world's peer-reviewed, biomedical research journals. The
publishers involved in the first phase of this joint initiative are
Blackwell, Elsevier Science, Harcourt Worldwide STM Group, Springer
Verlag, John Wiley, and Wolters Kluwer International Health and
Science. The web site for the HINARI project is not yet fully
operational (as of December 2001), but press releases and announcements
are available. The project went live on 31 January 2002: press
release. See
also the original
statement of intent and press release on
that statement
