Annex 3
THE HINARI AND
AGORA INITIATIVES
(WWW.HEALTHINTERNETWORK.ORG,
WWW.AGINTERNETWORK.ORG/EN)
The HINARI and AGORA programmes are cooperative
publisher led programmes to provide access to scientific journals
for biomedical and agricultural researchers, clinicians and policy
makers in the developing countries.
HINARI
HINARI (Health InterNetwork Access to Research
Initiative) was launched by the Director General of the World
Health Organisation in London, July 2001. Originally a WHO sponsored
partnership comprising six of the leading commercial scientific
journal publishers (Blackwell, Elsevier Science, Harcourt International
STM Group, Springer Verlag, John Wiley and Wolters Kluwer International
Health and Science, together with the British Medical Journal
Publishing Group), the programme has been joined by 39 other commercial
and learned society publishers since launch. Four of the seven
launch companies publish within the UK and six other British publishers
have joined the programme since. There are 46 publisher partners
currently. Other partners include Yale University, and the National
Library of Medicine, Washington DC.
In their original approach to the publishers,
WHO were asking only for access to high level scientific journals
for researchers in the developing world. All of the publishers
decided to offer their entire biomedical and healthcare content.
They also decided at the outset to provide full functionality,
not just basic access. The technology behind HINARI is very simple.
Qualifying users access the publishers' servers having been authenticated
on the WHO server in Geneva.
In HINARI, many thousands of researchers in
more than 1,100 institutions in 101 of the world's poorest countries
are now given full access to over 2,200 leading biomedical research
and healthcare journals, mostly without any charge. In some of
the relatively wealthier countries, nominal access fees are collected.
Uniquely, the publishers have decided unanimously to remit all
revenues back to the WHO to be used in training the librarians
and scientists in the developing world in the use of online scientific
information. There is close cooperation between the publishers
and the World Health Organisation. Launching the programme in
London, 9 July 2001, Dr Gro Harlem Brundtland, former Director
General of WHO described HINARI as "perhaps the biggest step
ever taken in reducing the health information gap between rich
and poor countries", while in Washington in December 2002
Kofi Annan said "HINARI is using information technology to
narrow the information gap in health science".
AGORA
Noting the success of the HINARI programme,
in 2002 officials of the Food and Agriculture Organisation approached
the leading commercial and learned society publishers in agricultural
science, with a view to instigating a similar programme in which
high quality scientific information could be provided for agricultural
scientists in the developing world. From the beginning, the publishers
volunteered to provide not only agricultural information, including
fishery and forestry, but also environmental, economical and critically,
nutritional information as well. AGORA (Access to Global Online
Research in Agriculture) was launched in Rome by the Director
General of the FAO, in October 2003, with 10 of the leading international
agriculture science publishers, six of them publishing in the
UK. Other partners include The Rockefeller Foundation, Cornell
University and DfID, which has provided funds for the creation
of an AGORA specific bibliographical database. AGORA works closely
with HINARI, to reduce costs and to maximise efficiency.
Both programmes are entirely voluntary cooperative
partnerships, and both seem to be working very well. The only
constraint to their success is inadequate IT infrastructure in
many of the beneficiary countries, although there indications
that in many of the countries, this is improving. A joint evaluation
programme is being developed, to report to the partners by December
2006, when this stage of development will be reviewed. All partners
believe that at least for the poorest countries, some kind of
free and where appropriate, low cost access to critical healthcare
and food information will grow out of these two programmes.
HINARI AND AGORA PUBLISHERS
|
American Academy for the Advancement of Science
| USA |
|
American Academy of Paediatrics | USA
|
American Association for Cancer Research |
USA |
American Cleft Palate-Craniofacial Association
| USA |
American College of Chest Physicians | USA
|
American College of Physicians | USA
|
American Medical Association | USA
|
American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology
| USA |
American Society of Clinical Oncology | USA
|
American Society of Haematology | USA
|
Annual Reviews | USA
|
Arnold | UK
|
BioMedCentral | UK
|
BioOne | USA
|
Blackwell Publishing | UK
|
BMJ Publishing Group | UK
|
Botanical Society of America | USA
|
CABI International | UK
|
Canadian Medical Association Journal | Canada
|
Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press | USA
|
Cochrane Collaboration | International
|
Company of Biologists | UK
|
Duodecim EMB Guidelines | Finland
|
Elsevier Science | UK, USA, NL
|
Journal of Bone & Joint Surgery (American Volume)
| USA |
Kluwer Academic Journals | Netherlands
|
Landes Bioscience | USA
|
Lippincott, Williams & Wilkins | USA
|
Massachusetts Medical Society (NEJM) | USA
|
Medical Journal of Australia | Australia
|
Morion | Ukraine
|
National Academy of Sciences | USA
|
Nature Publishing Group | UK
|
Oxford University Press | UK
|
Portland Press Ltd. (Biochemical Society) |
UK |
Royal College of Surgeons of England | UK
|
Royal Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain
| UK |
Royal Society of Medicine Press | UK
|
Sage | UK |
Society for the Study of Reproduction | USA
|
Springer Verlag | Germany
|
Swets & Zeitlinger | Netherlands
|
Taylor & Francis | UK
|
Thieme Verlag | Germany
|
University of Chicago Press | USA
|
John Wiley & Sons | UK, USA
|
|
|