UNEP, Yale, and Publishers Launch OARE

[Ann Okerson <ann.okerson@yale.edu>]

Of possible interest -- OARE was launched yesterday in New York 
City by the project partners.  Ann Okerson

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YALE  SCIENCE  NEWS
OFFICE OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS
P. O. BOX 208279
NEW HAVEN, CT  06520-8279 PHONE 203 432-1345
FAX  03 432-1333

CONTACT: Janet Rettig Emanuel 203-432-2157 janet.emanuel@yale.edu

For Immediate Release: October 30, 2006

UNEP, Yale and Publishers Launch "Online Access to Research in the
Environment" for Global Access to Critical Environmental Research

New Haven, Conn. - To help reduce great disparities in scientific 
resources, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), Yale 
University, and leading science and technology publishers today 
launch a new collaborative initiative to make global research in 
the environmental sciences available online to scientists, 
researchers, and policy makers in the developing world for free 
or at nominal cost.

Through Online Access to Research in the Environment (OARE), more 
than 200 prestigious publishers, societies and associations will 
offer one of the world's largest collections of scholarly, 
peer-reviewed environmental science journals to over 1,500 public 
and non-profit environmental institutions in more than 100 
developing nations of Africa, Asia and the Pacific, Latin America 
and the Caribbean, and Eastern Europe. Every institution enrolled 
in OARE will receive access to literature with an annual retail 
subscription value of many hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Institutions eligible to enroll and access resources through OARE 
include universities and colleges, academies of sciences, 
research institutes, ministries of the environment and other 
government agencies, libraries, and a range of national 
non-governmental organizations. Access for institutions in 70 
low-income countries will be free. Institutions in 36 
lower-middle-income countries will pay a nominal fee, all of 
which will be reinvested to support continued training and 
outreach activities in eligible countries.

"OARE is a new and inspiring example of international cooperation 
that can contribute greatly to the reduction of the North-South 
scientific gap and digital divide, objectives that are both at 
the top of the UN agenda and the UN Millennium Development 
Goals", said Achim Steiner, Executive Director of UNEP.

Over 1,200 scholarly journal titles in such fields as 
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, and zoology 
will be provided through a portal presented in English, Spanish 
and French. OARE will also provide important Abstract and Index 
Research Databases (A&I Databases) - tools the scientific and 
professional community use to search for information within 
scholarly publications.

OARE aims to contribute to the development of expert professional 
and academic communities and an informed public, encourage 
scientific creativity and productivity, and facilitate the 
development of progressive science-based national policies. It 
will help enable countries to build their own higher education 
programs in the environmental sciences, educate their own 
leaders, conduct their own research, publish their own scientific 
findings, and disseminate information to policy makers and the 
public.

"Thanks to advances in information and communication technologies 
and the great generosity of many leading scientific publishers 
and foundations, we have an unprecedented opportunity to provide 
environmental institutions in developing countries with important 
intellectual resources we in the developed world so often take 
for granted," said James Gustave Speth, dean of Yale's 
Environment School.

"Scientific publishers welcome this opportunity to provide access 
to the latest published research in environmental and related 
sciences to researchers and other professionals in 106 developing 
countries," said Michael Mabe, CEO of the International 
Association of Scientific, Technical and Medical Publishers 
(STM).  "We expect that, in turn, higher quality research will 
emerge from those countries, to the benefit of all of us,"

"The Hewlett Foundation is committed to providing high quality 
educational materials to students and scholars in the developing 
world. We are extremely pleased to join with Yale, UNEP and the 
many participating publishers, societies and associations to make 
scientific resources available in developing countries, where the 
need is so great," stated Paul Brest, president of the William 
and Flora Hewlett Foundation.

OARE will be coordinated by UNEP and Yale University in 
association with STM and 30 leading science and technology 
publishing houses. Support is provided by the William and Flora 
Hewlett Foundation and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur 
Foundation.  OARE will be managed in close cooperation with the 
Health Internetwork Access to Research Initiative (HINARI), 
launched by the World Health Organization (WHO) in 2001 to 
provide research to the medical community in developing nations, 
and Access to Global Online Research in Agriculture (AGORA), 
launched by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and 
Cornell University in 2003 to provide research to the 
agricultural community.  For more information, please visit the 
OARE website at www.oaresciences.org.

Organizations providing scientific content through OARE include 
leading scientific publishers (e.g. Annual Reviews, Blackwell, 
Cambridge, Elsevier, John Wiley, Nature Publishing Group, 
Springer, Taylor & Francis, Oxford and many others) and more than 
200 scientific societies and associations (e.g. French Academy of 
Sciences, American Association for the Advancement of Science, 
Chinese Academy of Sciences, Ecological Society of America, 
National Academy of Sciences, Nordic Society OIKOS, Oceanographic 
Society of Japan, Royal Geographical Society, Royal 
Meteorological Society of Great Britain, and the Zoological 
Society of London). A complete listing of OARE's founding 
publishers, societies and associations is at 
www.oaresciences.org.

OARE coordinators include:  Paul Bendiks Walberg, Yale School of 
Forestry and Environmental Studies: paul.walberg@yale.edu; 
Kimberly Parker, Yale Library: kimberly.parker@yale.edu; and 
Constant Serge Bounda, UNEP Library: serge.bounda@unep.org.

Project Co-PIs include: Professor Oswald Schmitz, Yale School of Forestry
and Environmental Studies: oswald.schmitz@yale.edu; and Ann Okerson, Yale
Library: ann.okerson@yale.edu

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