Ithaca, New York
October 23, 2003
For
agricultural scientists in developing countries, scientific
seclusion soon will give way to inclusion, thanks to an online
system developed at Cornell
University's Albert R. Mann Library for the U.N. Food and
Agriculture Organization (FAO).
The system,
announced Oct. 14 at FAO headquarters in
Rome,
is the second major online portal for scientific literature
aimed exclusively at the developing world. Called Access to
Global Online Research in Agriculture (AGORA), the system
will provide scientists in developing nations with free access
to more than 400 journals in agriculture and related science.
The Rockefeller Foundation and other donor agencies fund the
project. Scientific publishers are providing the content without
charge.
"Developing
countries need access to current scientific literature in order
to advance in a fast-paced, knowledge-intensive research
environment, but they are often shut out of the competition by
the high cost of journal subscriptions," said Cornell President
Jeffrey Lehman in a statement read at the Rome project launch.
"I am delighted that Cornell, through the Mann Library, and with
the support of the Rockefeller Foundation and the world's
leading scientific publishers, has addressed this problem
head-on through AGORA."
Librarians
and computing experts from Cornell's Mann Library worked with
publishers and the FAO to assemble AGORA, selecting the
journals, developing authentication solutions, and resolving
technical problems. The FAO will be responsible for management
and maintenance of all functions of the AGORA Web site, with
additional support coming from Cornell and the World Health
Organization (WHO). Mann librarians will assist with outreach,
training and reference questions, says AGORA project manager
Mary Ochs, head of the library's collection development and
preservation. She notes that the new site will offer
developing-world researchers, policymakers, educators, students,
technical workers and extension specialists a scientific
literature collection comparable to that available to scientists
in the industrialized world.
According
to the FAO, many agricultural libraries in developing countries
have not received scientific journals for more than a decade as
collections have disintegrated due to economic and political
disruption and war. Without access to current information,
scientists in developing countries struggle to keep up with
advances, often making it impossible to publish their work in
scholarly journal.
AGORA's
founding publishers are Blackwell Publishing, CABI Publishing,
Elsevier, Kluwer Academic Publishers, Lippincott, Williams and
Wilkins, Nature Publishing Group, Oxford University Press,
Springer-Verlag and John Wiley & Sons.
Scientists
and educators in the developing world now have two low-cost,
Cornell-developed options for entering the information age, said
Lehman. Since 1999, many of them have been subscribing to Mann
Library's The Essential Electronic Agricultural Library (TEEAL),
a CD-ROM "library in a box" of recent journals in agriculture
and the life sciences.
The AGORA
Web site borrows design elements from TEEAL and from the HINARI
portal for medical journals, started by the WHO two years ago.
The new site consists of an indexed database for searching
AGORA's content linked to a gateway providing access to
full-text journal articles.
AGORA
access is at
http://www.aginternetwork.org/en/
Rome, Italy
14 October 2003
AGORA offers students and academics free or
low-cost access to scientific literature
Students, researchers and academics in some of the world's
poorest countries will gain free or low-cost access to a wealth
of scientific literature under a new initiative announced today
by FAO and a range of public
and private sector partners.
The AGORA (Access to Global Online Research in Agriculture)
initiative will provide access to more than 400 key journals in
food, nutrition, agriculture and related biological,
environmental and social sciences.
The demand for scientific literature in developing countries has
gone unfulfilled for many years. Gaining access to current
scientific information has become a daily struggle for thousands
of students, researchers and academics.
A promising example
While students are unable to access the literature and acquire
the knowledge they need, researchers and academics are
confronted with mounting difficulties in publishing their
findings in peer-reviewed journals, updating their teaching
curricula and identifying funding.
"The AGORA initiative is a promising example of the
International Alliance Against Hunger in action," according to
Anton Mangstl, Director of FAO's Library and Documentation
Systems Division.
International Alliance Against Hunger is the theme of this
year's World Food Day - 16 October - which marks the anniversary
of FAO.
"By bringing together bilateral agencies, UN agencies, private
foundations and international scientific publishers, AGORA
demonstrates that the public and private sectors can work
together to build greater momentum towards building a world
without hunger," Mr. Mangstl said.
International cooperation
Founding publishers of AGORA are : Blackwell Publishing ; CABI
Publishing ; Elsevier ; Kluwer Academic Publishers ; Lippincott,
Williams & Wilkins; Nature Publishing Group ; Oxford University
Press ; Springer Verlag ; and John Wiley and Sons.
Funding and support is also provided by Cornell University Mann
Library, Rockefeller Foundation, the United Kingdom Department
for International Development and the United States Agency for
International Development.
Eric Swanson, Senior Vice-President of John Wiley and Sons, Inc,
and Chair of the International Association of Scientific,
Technical and Medical Publishers said: "There can be few things
more satisfying to a scientific publisher than to contribute to
a practical program to make valuable information easily
available in places where it will be used to improve health,
nutrition and education of the world's poor."
"I look forward to working with FAO, academic institutions and
the computing and telecommunications industries to make this
important initiative live up to its full potential," Mr. Swanson
also said.
"FAO is committed to strengthening capacity for knowledge
generation and dissemination as a contribution to achievement of
the goals of the International Alliance Against Hunger and as a
follow-up to the World Food Summit," Mr. Mangstl stated.
The AGORA website has been developed in close cooperation
between FAO and Cornell University, with funding provided by the
Rockefeller Foundation, based on tools and systems developed by
WHO for a similar service in health called HINARI.
AGORA access is at
http://www.aginternetwork.org/en/ |
