Improving Online Access to Medical Information for Low-Income Countries

Abstract

Over the past two years, the World Health Organization (WHO) has worked with publishing partners (including the Journal) to improve online access to scientific resources as a way of supporting health professionals, medical researchers, and academics in developing countries. WHO helped to create the Health InterNetwork Access to Research Initiative (HINARI, http://www.healthinternetwork.org), which offers health and medical institutions in 69 of the world's lowest-income countries free online access to a large library of important international journals. This initiative has been expanded to include an additional 44 countries that qualify for access to the journals at a very low price. To date, 47 publishers from all streams of scientific publishing have joined HINARI to offer access to more than 2300 journals and other full-text resources.