Elsevier contributes its content to researchers in developing countries bringing them closer to their peers and their individual research communities through various international initiatives.
 
Due to the overwhelming success of two of the initiatives - HINARI and AGORA, Elsevier has recently stretched the content fields and increased the number of journals made available for free to developing countries through both these programmes and also the new OARE research programme. Elsevier now provides free access to 1,013 journals through each programme.

Elsevier is proud to be involved with the following international initiatives.

Elsevier is one of the founding health publishers of HINARI (Health InterNetwork Access to Research Initiative). A UN-based initiative, HINARI provides online access to all Elsevier journals, without charge, to public institutions in developing countries. 1,502 institutions in 125 countries have free access to 1,013 Elsevier journals via HINARI and these institutes have downloaded over 100,000 full-text downloads a month in the past 2 years.  In 2005, Elsevier journals were responsible for a third of all downloads via the entire HINARI collection, demonstrating the importance and quality of Elsevier titles throughout the world.

Inspired by the success of HINARI, the UN’s Food and Agricultural Organization established AGORA (Access to Global Online Research in Agriculture), a programme that provides access to high quality relevant information in agriculture and related fields to developing countries.  Elsevier offers 1,013 journals free via AGORA, generating over 10,000 downloads a month in the last 2 years.

A group of about 200 scientific publishers and associations, including Elsevier, have banded together to provide developing nations with free or reduced cost access to scientific literature about the environment in a project called OARE – Online Access to Research in the Environment.  The project was developed by the UN Environment Program, Yale University, and publishers.  Under the initiative, about 1200 public and nonprofit environmental institutions in 100 developing countries in Asia, Latin America, Africa, the Pacific, the Caribbean and Eastern Europe will have access to peer-reviewed environmental journal literature and A&I services through a secure portal on the Web that will be offered in English, Spanish and French.  A large number of societies from all parts of the world are also participating.  Elsevier offers 1,013 journals free via OARE.

In collaboration with the ICTP (the Abdus Salam International Center for Theoretic Physics) and their pioneering E-Journals Delivery Service, Elsevier has provided scientists in developing countries with free access to Elsevier journals in physics, mathematics and computer science.

Via an alliance between the African Virtual University and Elsevier, mathematicians and physicists in sub-Saharan African receive access to ScienceDirect. Students and researchers at AVU partner institutions also gain access to a digital library with online academic literature and links to international libraries.


Elsevier has donated a book on behalf of each of the company’s 6,700 employees, providing a core collection of 670 books to 10 university libraries in developing countries.  In 2006, an additional 350 newly published books were donated by the authors to 4 of the universities as part of Elsevier’s author incentive programme.