Eligibility
The Research4Life core offer includes two groups of countries, areas, or territories: Group A and Group B based on eligibility criteria.
Registered institutions in Group A countries can access Research4Life free of charge while institutions in Group B countries may access the Research4Life programmes for a small yearly fee.
Eligible institutions are: national universities, professional schools (medicine, agriculture, pharmacy, public health, engineering, etc.), research institutes, teaching hospitals and healthcare centers, government offices, national libraries, agricultural extension centers and local non-governmental organizations, located in an eligible country, area or territory.
The following categories of institutions are not eligible for Research4Life, even if the office is located in an eligible country, area or territory:
- International or regional organizations
- Member-based associations and societies
- Individual persons
- Commercial companies
- Any institution in a country, area or territory which is not eligible
Please note that even if you cannot register for our programmes, you can still access abstracts of all the journals for free and also full text from the Accessible Content tabs of the Portal:
Registration
The programmes maintain lists of registered academic institutions.
Other eligible types of institutions may be registered, but are not listed publicly. If in doubt, please contact [email protected].
Please visit our registration page and carefully read the instructions, especially those on the limits of length of some of the fields to fill, otherwise you will receive an error message from the website.
Please also note that Reserach4Life needs at least two contacts (of the director and librarian) to process the registration request.
Validation and processing of new registrations normally takes two to four weeks. It is essential that your institution completes all of the fields in the registration form with the requested information. Failure to complete all fields in the form will result in delays in processing your application.
It is possible to have an IP-based login to access Research4Life. Please follow the video to learn more about how to register your institutional IPs in IPRegistry and record the proper code in the registration form.
Research4Life now has a unified portal which contains the collections for all five programmes: Hinari, AGORA, OARE, ARDI, GOALI. In addition, AGORA and ARDI have separate portals only for their own collections.
We have a simple introductory video in English available for you and your user communities: https://youtu.be/D86H2RTff1k
Getting started
Research4Life now has a unified portal which contains the collections for all five programmes: Hinari, AGORA, OARE, ARDI, GOALI. In addition, AGORA and ARDI have separate portals only for their own collections.
We have a simple introductory video in English available for you and your user communities: https://youtu.be/D86H2RTff1k
Once the Research4Life team has processed your completed registration form, your director and librarian will be contacted and given detailed instructions on how to access and use the system.
All staff (researchers, teaching and administrative staff) and students of a registered institution are eligible to access the programmes, as long as they abide by the guidelines within the license agreement. On-site visitors may use the collections if a staff member logs in with their account.
Users need a computer connected to the internet. The Research4Life portals work with recent versions of the most standard web browsers. Users also need a recent version of Adobe Acrobat Reader to access journal articles in PDF. The Reader is available for free at www.adobe.com.
Research4Life extracts statistics from logins by user names. Statistics can be requested once a year by the institution.
Access issues
Research4Life has a unified portal which contains the collections for all five programmes Hinari, AGORA, OARE, ARDI, GOALI:
https://portal.research4life.org
In addition, AGORA and ARDI have separate portals only for their own collections:
AGORA : https://agora.research4life.
We have been working to improve access for users and to avoid the potential for password abuse. To do this, we collaborate with the IPRegistry (https://app.theipregistry.org/) to record IP addresses from our participating institutions and have begun automating this process. The automated lookup from the IPRegistry has now added for us the IP addresses of some of our institutions. This happened because the IPRegistry already had your institution IPs on file.
You should contact your library or your director if your institution doesn’t have a library.
When an institution registers, your library contact and the director of the institution will receive a welcome message with the ID and password.
In order for your institution to use its IPs to login to Research4Life without your username, we need you to register the fixed IPs in the IP registry. These IPs will be recognized by our authentication and you will not need to enter your user ID and password.
Please follow the short video on how to register your Institutional IPs in the IPRegistry and inform us at [email protected] when the details are correct.
Please ask your institution’s IT group to add permission for the following domains:
- portal.research4life.org
- agora.research4life.
org - ardi.research4life.org
- login.research4life.org
- sts.research4life.org
- stsr4l.who.int
- extranet.who.int
- www.research4life.org
It is likely that your cache has stored login details from a past session. To avoid the memory cache problem, we suggest you try logging into Research4Life using a private browser window. This will prevent the browser from saving login details, and you will be able to log in again later without any issues.
- In Firefox, right-click on the Menu icon, and then click on ‘New Private Window’.
- In Chrome, right-click on the Menu icon, and then click on ‘New Incognito Window’.
- In Internet Explorer, click on the Tools menu, and then click on the “InPrivate Browsing” option.
- Once in the private/incognito window, you can open a Research4Life session by connecting to Research4Life portal and selecting the programme you want to use.
The language choice on the login page is a preference for your web browser and only affects the authentication messages and errors. When you reach the content portal of the chosen Research4Life programme, you will still need to select the language of the portal.
In order to update your institutional details, we need to regain communication with the official contacts at your institution. Please contact us at [email protected] with complete information. We will need officials from your institution to request us to resend the ID and password to the new librarian and/or director.
Once you leave an institution, you are not eligible to use Research4Life with the access codes of that institution. If you join a new institution, contact the librarian or the director to know if your new institution has access to Research4Life. If not, the librarian or director can register for access.
Please inform Research4Life helpesk at [email protected] that you are leaving and provide us with the name and email address of the new contact person.
Content
Content offered by publishers may vary depending on your location and type of institution.
Check which content is available to you through the Country Offer Page.
If you know the name of the journal that you wish to access after entering one of the programmes, go to “Search Content” (available through the Menu) and type the journal name.
Detailed searching for articles by title, author or subject can be done through the Search box across all Research4Life on the main page or through Search Content feature.
Many journals offer access to back issues. However, the journal collections available, including the policy on back issues, is determined by each publisher and will vary accordingly.
If you can login but are unable to access a particular publisher, journal or book, please send an email at [email protected] with:
- your userID (in order to identify your country and your type of institution);
- the journal(s) books and/or resources concerned and publisher(s);
- the type of browser you are using.
Moving from Group A to Group B
Institutions are now required to pay an annual fee of 1500 USD.
Institutions are granted 3 months free trial period (Jan.1 to 31 March) of the transition year when a country moves from Group A into Group B which will allow more time to arrange a payment WHILE the full access is maintained.
If no payment has been made after the initial transition trial period of 3 months, the institution will not receive the full access relevant to the country, area or territory.
The institution should investigate the local banking policies of the country and learn the necessary requirements in order make an international bank transfer. If an agreement is required, please refer to the Research4Life license that is received along with the Welcome Message. Contact [email protected] to report any difficulties.
Yes there is a discount given if 3 or more institutions pay together (and in a single bank transfer). For example, if 4 institutions pay together, then the total amount to pay would be $4000 USD instead of $6000 USD.
In addition, if an institution pays for 2 consecutive years (the current year and the following year) then the total amount would be 2000 USD instead of 3000 USD.
Payment (for Group B institutions)
Access to Research4Life is free for eligible institutions in Group A countries. The cost for eligible institutions in Group B countries is USD 1,500 per institution per calendar year (from January through December). This cost remains the same no matter which month during the calendar year you choose to pay. For instance, if you pay in April, you will have access from April to December of that calendar year.
Yes, one payment for Research4Life will grant access to all the programmes (Hinari, AGORA, OARE, ARDI and GOALI).
No. Payment is for a calendar year, from January 1 to December 31, and remains the same no matter when the payment is made. For example, if payment is made in April, then the full amount must be paid and access will continue only until 31 December of that year.
Yes. An individual or another organization may sponsor the payment. To do so, they should contact [email protected] providing the name(s) of the institution and their username(s).
Several WHO Country Offices offer this facility. If you need additional information on your WHO Country Office, please contact [email protected].
If your institution has not paid the annual fee with Research4Life, it may interest you to know that some publishers allow access to their resources to all registered users in Research4Life in the countries where each publisher is offering. Please, find below the list of the available resources through the Country Offer Page.
Your institution can transfer USD 1,500 directly into the bank account provided in the invoice.
The free trial period lasts for six months. In order to continue receiving the full access relevant to your country, area or territory, you must submit payment prior to the end of the trial. Instructions concerning the payment will be sent to you at the beginning of the free trial. You may alert [email protected] that a payment has been made to avoid loss of access at the end of the trial period.
Training and promotion
You will find training and promotional material on the Research4Life website as well as on the respective websites of the programmes:
Partners and publishers
- For subscription-based journals, please contact us directly at [email protected].
- For the open-access journal(s), Research4Life works with the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ).
Thus, we recommend that you apply for inclusion after checking whether your journal fulfills all of the criteria.
If you have any questions about the application process, please contact DOAJ at [email protected].
Once listed in DOAJ, open-access journal titles from relevant subjects are exported from DOAJ into the relevant Research4Life content portals.
Yes, depending on subject and relevance review. Please contact us directly at [email protected].
Yes, Research4Life includes thousands of online books. Please contact us directly at [email protected].
Partners include the world’s leading scientific publishers, WHO, FAO, UNEP, WIPO, ILO, Cornell and Yale University Libraries, STM and other technical partners: list of partners.
Appropriate Use
The summary of elements from the License is intended to provide helpful guidance only. The License itself remains the final authority on the actual restrictions or permissions granted by the participating publishers.
All staff (researchers, teaching and administrative staff) and students of a registered institution are eligible to access the programmes, as long as they abide by the license agreement. These are considered “authorized users.” On-site visitors may also use the collections in accordance with the license agreement if a staff member logs in for them with the institution account.
Downloading or printing complete journal issues or books is a violation of copyright laws because it breaks the right of reproduction. Users do have unrestricted access to the online version of the Publisher’s Material. The License does allow you to print, download, and save limited numbers of entire articles or chapters from any journal issue or book if the selection does not exceed 15% of the total content of that journal or book.
These restrictions do NOT apply to Open Access content listed in Research4Life, which may be freely downloaded and used in line with whatever Open Access licence has been applied (e.g. CC-BY allows free and unlimited use and re-use of the original content).
Academic and teaching staff may make copies in print or digital form of articles for course packs. If the copies are supplied in digital form, these electronic copies must be deleted from the university server at the end of the semester.
These restrictions do NOT apply to Open Access content listed in Research4Life, which may be freely downloaded and used in line with whatever Open Access licence has been applied (e.g. CC-BY allows free and unlimited use and re-use of the original content).
Yes, with restrictions. It is ok when using computers or other devices owned by the authorized user or the Institution. Otherwise, remote access from other installations is permitted only to:
- An authorised user who is on a short-term (one month or less) professional trip outside of their institutional environment, including outside of the country
- A distance education student (from anywhere in the world) of an institution provided that the access is via an IP based login, NOT via an issued user name and password.
The Institution must
- monitor and enforce the agreement on its premises and among users associated with the Institution including informing the publishers and Research4Life if the Institution learns that a user has violated the agreement.
- seek to ensure any violation is not repeated
- use best efforts to inform authorised Users of the permissions and restrictions stated in the license.
This date indicates the duration of the publisher partners’ commitment to maintain Research4Life.
The License clause does NOT :
- Commit Group B institutions to paying the annual access fee
- Prevent the institution from terminating the License and ceasing to use Research4Life access
- Commit any particular publisher to continuing to offer their content in any particular country
The main signatory on the License must be someone with legal authority to commit the institution to the License. The person should sign as “Director”. The Library contact should also sign the License, providing complete information on the signature page as requested.
If you make use of the content available to your unpaid institution through Research4Life, the License is relevant. (The Country Offer Page shows publishers offering to unpaid Group B institutions 
)
Institutions using the Research4Life access should maintain their pre-existing journal subscriptions to content available to them from Research4Life, as of the year of their registration for Research4Life access.
The License clause does NOT apply to:
- Any subscriptions with publishers not participating in Research4Life at all (no requirement to maintain these)
- Any subscriptions with publishers not offering to your country/institution category via Research4Life (no requirement to maintain these)
- Any subscriptions to other journals not provided via Research4Life from these publishers (no requirement to maintain these)
- Any subscriptions cancelled before the year of initially using the Research4Life access
For more information regarding questions you may have, please contact our helpdesk: [email protected]
