Research4Life Newsletter November 2012

Published: Tuesday 1st January 2013
Category: Partner Newsletter

Table of Contents

 

 


Note from the Editor

Welcome to this latest edition of our Research4Life Partner Newsletter. Our goal is to ensure that you can stay up to speed on the latest developments in Research4Life and to enable you as partners to fully leverage and promote your participation. In this issue you’ll find updates on some of the issues which were discussed in our July General Partners Meeting as well as a trainer’s spotlight on Lenny Rhine of the MLA/Librarians Without Borders.

We are delighted to welcome the new Chair of the Executive Council, Emily Gillingham, Director of Library Relations at Wiley and founding Research4Life partner. In this month’s newsletter, Emily shares her first ‘Chairman’s Report.’ We also heartily thank our outgoing Chair, Kimberly Parker, HINARI programme manager, for her past two years of (additional) tireless service to the partnership.

In November, Research4Life launched a revamped website at www.research4life.org. A giant thanks to Charlotte Masiello Riome, our Research4Life Communications Coordinator for singlehandedly managing this process-and to WIPO for their material and moral support for our vastly improved outreach channel. Our new online home will host news, testimonials, case studies and programme information and will give us the flexibility to add further resources, such as training materials, in the future. The website will also host our new social media channels on Facebook and Twitter. Please follow us at www.twitter.com/R4LPartnership and ‘like’ us at www.facebook.com/R4Lpartnership! We would really appreciate it if you could share these sites with your social media marketing colleagues to help us extend our networks and share news.

– Ylann Schemm, Chair of the Research4Life Communications and Marketing Team; Senior Corporate Responsibility Manager, Elsevier

Note from the New Chair of Executive Council

After 10 years working on Research4Life I’m delighted to have recently taken on the Chairmanship of the Executive Council. Kimberly Parker of WHO set an extremely high bar in this role and has propelled Research4Life to now encompass four distinct programmes with books and other resources now also available in more than 6000 institutions worldwide. She has pushed through critical technological improvements to the service and will continue to play an important part in the evolution of the programmes. On behalf of the Executive Council and all the partners I would like to extend our great thanks to Kim for all that she has done for Research4Life.

There are also some clear areas of focus for us over the coming period. For example, a new CRM system is being implemented which has the potential to radically improve the way in which access is delivered. It will also be a tool which we can leverage to improve our communications with librarians and information officers in the recipient institutions in order to support greater dialogue and usage of the resources. This fits with our strategic goal to build engagement with librarians and researchers in the developing countries and examples of plans in this area include developing a Librarian Advisory Board for Research4Life and bringing users onto the Executive Council. The recent case study booklet and videos, all available on the newly revamped www.research4life.org site, amply show how the programmes have made an impact on clinical practice, public policy and higher education. We will continue to work with the user community and our partners to improve outreach, training, access and outcomes.

Many of you will have seen our press release this week announcing the extended commitment that our Partners have made to support Research4Life through 2020. This long term sustainability is a critical element of the initiative, giving eligible institutions the justification and confidence to make related investments in necessary networked systems, teaching staff, labs and research projects. It is this long term commitment that is making the difference to Research4Life’s effectiveness. As one of the beneficiaries, Gamal Khalafalla Mohamed Ali, Director General of Sudan’s Central Medical Supplies Public Corporation, says; “As a policymaker, I use research published in HINARI for formulating research-based policies. I have written many proposals and most of these find their way to implementation. A major reason for this, I think is the evidence that underpins the proposals. To me HINARI is like water and oxygen: it is vital for me.”

It’s a pleasure to work with so many others on a project which delivers something like water and oxygen. Thank you for your continued support.

Emily Gillingham is the Chair of the Executive Council for Research4Life and has been involved in the initiative, particularly the marketing and communications side, since soon after its launch. She is also Director of Library Relations at Wiley, working to support engagement with this key audience and to deliver services which meet the needs of librarians and information professionals. In this role she runs Wiley’s international network of Customer Advisory Boards. Emily is also a member of the COUNTER marketing committee and has been a member of the STM communications committee.

Core offer revised eligibility criteria

This July, the General Partners Meeting revised the eligibility criteria for countries, areas, and territories in our Core offer with one additional criterion – Total GNI (World Bank figures). The main purpose of the revision is to use clear third-party indicators to provide the basis on which some countries have been classified as ineligible for our Core offer.

At the same time, the inclusion of the total GNI factor enabled us to include very tiny economies, or smaller economies with slightly higher GNI per capita numbers. The newly eligible or reinstated countries for 2013 are: Botswana; Dominica; Gabon; Grenada; Mauritius; Montenegro; Palau; Saint Kitts and Nevis; Saint Lucia; Saint Vincent and the Grenadines; and Seychelles. The new eligibility criteria can be found at

 


Partners commit to 2020

During the July 2012 Research4Life General Partners Meeting in Washington DC, the partners reaffirmed and extended their commitment to Research4life beyond 2012 for an additional 8 years. A press release announcing the partners’ renewed commitment through 2020 and showcasing achievements was released on November 15th. “As the world community looks beyond the Millennium Development Goal milestone dates, the Research4Life partnership is setting an example by ensuring sustainability of these important information access initiatives through 2020.”

 


Transitional Path Offer – A new opt-in for publisher partners

The General Partners Meeting this summer also approved a new “Transitional Path Option” from January 2013. The goal of the Transitional Path Offer is to ensure a gradual transition for the types of institution likely to be rarely involved in countrywide consortia deals as countries graduate from eligibility for the Research4Life Core Offer but remain in less developed states. In order to ensure all the components are properly in place, we will roll out this new option initially for the HINARI programme only.

In the Transitional Path countries, institutional eligibility will be limited to national (local) non-governmental organizations (NGOs) or agriculture extension centres that are not also research institutes, educational organizations, or major government offices.

As the Transitional Path Offer is just beginning, many publishers are carefully examining their current arrangements and positions in the involved countries. Publishers will be assumed not to be participating in this Transitional Path Offer unless they ask to opt in. We anticipate that the numbers of information resources on offer and the number of institutions who will register for the access will both remain small for at least the coming year. The following countries fit the criteria initially established for eligibility for the Transitional Path – Belarus; Bulgaria; Costa Rica; Cuba; Egypt; Indonesia; Iran; Lebanon; Pakistan; Panama; Philippines; Serbia; South Africa; and Thailand.

http://www.who.int/hinari/eligibility/transitional_path_offer_of_hinari/en/index.html

More Research4Life case studies come to the small screen

Interactive Africa will be bringing us a number of new videos in the coming months, including interviews with Research4Life users Dr Sami Hyacinthe Kambire, an agronomist in Burkina Faso’s Institute for Environment and Agricultural Research and Dr. Tim Meade (Tiny Tim & Friends) who is working to improve the lives of HIV-infected children in Zambia. The videos will bring audiences to the field and into the lives of those benefiting from the Research4Life programmes. This series of three videos has been sponsored by the BMJ Group, Microsoft, Wiley and Elsevier. If you are interested in sponsoring the creation of a video, please contact [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]

For up to date Research4life videos and case studies, visit http://www.research4life.org/case-studies/

Interview with Research4Life’s Lenny Rhine – A leading example in Training the Trainers

Since June 2006, Lenny has been holding training workshops all over the world for the Research4Life programmes with financial support from various organizations, including WHO, ITOCA and in collaboration with the Librarians Without Borders(r)/Medical Library Association (LWB/MLA). Lenny has held training workshops all over the world, including sub-Saharan Africa, Asia, and South Pacific, as well as English speaking countries in the Americas and Eastern Europe.

What have been some of the benefits you have seen directly from your training?

Some of the visible or tangible benefits are just observing the participants gain the skills to utilize the Research4Life resources. I’ve seen researchers and physicians find a valuable article and proceed to read it completely instead of completing their training course assignments. Hospital residents have spent hours using the evidence-based medicine resources as they are obtaining invaluable information for use upon returning to the hospital’s wards. Health information professionals realize the value of the programmes and understand their role as teachers. After a national workshop, there is increased usage of Research4Life programmes by the institutions represented. We also see an increase in registrations.

How has the training translated to capacity building for your institutions?

As Gracian mentioned in the June2012 Partner newsletter, the goal of the train-the-trainer mode is to give the participants the skills so that they can use the Research4Life materials and also instruct others when they return to their institutions. Besides the specific usage skills, we also teach marketing /promotion strategies and ask the participants to apply them at their institutions. In future workshops, we plan to discuss specific outcomes that will be surveyed at six and twelve months.

Since 2008, we also have conducted training for individuals from developed countries whose institutions have linkages in Research4Life eligible institutions. Besides approximately 10 workshops, participants have developed 2 training modules and a series of HINARI training videos.

 

How has the training continued? (i.e. Train the trainer)

In the past 5+ years, LWB has conducted 50+ workshops in 23 countries with an average attendance of 25 people. As previously mentioned, many of these are in conjunction with ITOCA or sponsored by WHO regional offices. To reach individuals who are unable to attend formal workshops, we have developed online Short Courses for HINARI, AGORA and OARE. These courses are available on the ITOCA and MLA Moodle servers. Via group email messages, I also continue to communicate with participants from workshops for the past three years. These messages keep them informed about new Research4Life developments and new/updated training material.

 

How many institutes do you normally train in a year timespan, and what counties/cities have you done in the last six months?

LWB has conducted 6 workshops in the last 6 months in Namibia, Nepal and Viet Nam. The ones in Viet Nam were collaborations with the World Intellectual Property Organization. The normal rate is 4 or 5 training sites per year with 8 to 10 workshops. In June, LWB and ITOCA taught a HINARI distance learning course in English, French and Portuguese. 71 individuals completed the online course.

Donate to HINARI and support Research4Life

We are always asked by partners to suggest different ways that individuals and society members can contribute to Research4life. We are grateful for your current participation, and are pleased to announce an additional way in which you can further enhance your support for the developing world. If you, your organization, or any of your society members would like to contribute funds towards programme activities, you can donate to this account and support Research4Life: http://www.who.int/hinari/donation/en/

Lancet – Access to content online

The Lancet now also separately available on Research4life

As a founding partner Elsevier continues to extend its content contribution to Research4Life and is delighted to announce that The Lancet is now also separately available to all countries in the Research4life programmes. The Lancet believes that everyone has the right to the highest attainable standard of health and that care should be equitable and just. This initiative will ensure that The Lancet’s extensive portfolio of high quality global health related content is available to those who really need it. It allows users of Research4Life to view all Lancet journals’ content on The Lancet website, and be free to browse its specialty Collections, and Global Health and Clinical Series on www.thelancet.com.

New and improved Research4Life website launches

Research4Life is proud to announce a newly enhanced website has been launched at www.research4life.org. Thank you to the World Intellectual Property Organization for their support in making this a reality.

The website continues to grow, and in the near future will provide extensive information on training activities, increased multimedia featuring our users, and enhanced communication tools for partners to promote the Research4Life initiative to their organizations, their partners, and the rest of the world.

Interesting latest facts

  • ARDI: training remains a key theme for WIPO and ARDI, with 20 workshops having been conducted and an additional 30 planned for this year.
  • 2013 will mark AGORA’s 10 year anniversary.
  • Research4Life currently brings the contents of over 10,000 peer-reviewed scientific journals and some 7,000 books to researchers in the developing countries.
  • For 78 of the world’s poorest countries subscription charges are waived, while for a further 28 countries they are discounted by over 99%.
  • Over 6,000 institutions are currently registered for access to content available through Research4Life.

 

Hinari