Information access in developing countries

Access to scholarly information for research and teaching is a major concern for many of our members. Many academics and students in developing country institutions report that major journals are often unavailable to them. There are however a number of access initiatives providing discounted or free access to universities, and recent ACU work has for example found that many African universities have access to at least 80% of the top journals - comparable to universities in Europe and elsewhere.

The ACU works closely with INASP to support its work surrounding access to electronic resources and research communication. Further advice and information on access to journals and other resources for developing country researchers and students is given below.

Accessing journals in Africa - a brief guide for researchers

Colleagues in African universities may find the following guide useful, prepared by the ACU and INASP. Guides for colleagues in other regions will be prepared in due course, but you may find much of the information here is still valuable to you:

Accessing journals and other resources in African universities and research institutes: A brief guide for researchers (January 2011)

The ACU's wider work to support information access

Since 2002 we have run the Low Cost Journals Scheme (also known as Protecting the African Library) to offer members in developing countries in Africa, Asia, the Pacific and Caribbean substantially discounted subscriptions to print journals from major publishers.

In 2008 we launched a new ACU-INASP initiative to work with publishers on these issues - Publishers for Development.

In 2009-2010 the ACU's digital libraries study for Arcadia explored the problems of access to online journals in east and southern Africa.

Useful links and resources

Academics, students or librarians in many of our member universities are entitled to free or substantially discounted access to many academic journals. It is not possible to provide comprehensive listings of all schemes here but some information on major schemes is given below, in addition to links to further sources of advice.

Research for Life (HINARI, AGORA, OARE)

Three United Nations agencies, the WHO, FAO and UNEP together with a number of collaborating publishers run Research for Life, a series of schemes providing access to research information in health, agriculture and the environment and which allow free access to many journals. These are accessible below. Contact your librarian to find out how to make use of these.

• HINARI - health
• AGORA - agriculture
• OARE - environment

PERii - Programme for the Enhancement of Research Information (INASP)

INASP's Programme for the Enhancement of Research Information (PERii) provides discounted access to developing country institutions through nation-wide licensing.  Your institution may already be registered. Contact your university librarian to find out.

• A list of resources available in your country through PERii can be accessed from INASP's website.You can also see a list of resources that your institution has registered for by clicking on your country and following the links. 

• You can also see a list of resources by publisher and who is eligible for these by country.

• You can find out who your national contact person is from the list on INASP's site - see the drop down box in the top left of the homepage and select your country.

Other schemes and access initiatives

• INASP maintains a directory of open access materials and programmes complementary to PERii. 

• The INASP directory may also be useful, providing links to resources by subject area.

• DOAJ (Directory of Open Access Journals).  This service covers 3,622 free, full text, quality controlled scientific and scholarly journals, covering all subjects and languages.

• WorldWideScience.org provides one-stop searching of national and international scientific databases and portals, covering some 32 national scientific databases and portals from 52 countries.