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Home » About us » Resources for research » Resources for developing country researchers

We have compiled a collection of resources for  researchers. Most are available free, or at low cost, to researchers in developing countries. For many of these resources you just need to click on the link provided; for others you may need to register to gain access.

 

Contents

Access to Scholarly Resources

Journal articles

• African Index Medicus (AIM)
  An international index to African health literature and information sources. Produced by the World Health Organization in collaboration with the Association for Health Information and Libraries in Africa (AHILA).
• African Journals OnLine (AJOL)
  Hosts over 400 peer-reviewed, African-published scholarly journals. Over 60,000 abstracts and over 50,000 full text articles (either free or charged).
• AfroAIDSinfo
  "A web-based information portal developed by the South African Medical Research Council. It provides up-to-date, scientifically accurate information on the Human Immunodeficiency Virus and Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (HIV/AIDS) with a specific focus on the southern African region."
• Afrolib
  The World Health Organization Regional Office for Africa (AFRO) library database on the Web. It indexes WHO/AFRO technical documents, monographs and some African medical articles. Afrolib provides full text access to most of these publications.
• AGORA :Access to Global Online Research in Agriculture
  Nearly 1300 food, agriculture, environmental science and related social sciences journals for institutions in developing countries.
• Archive of African Journals
  Digitized full text of articles of eleven African social science and humanities journals.
• ArDI 
  The Access to Research for Development and Innovation (ARDI) program is coordinated by the World Intellectual Property Organization together with its partners in the publishing industry with the aim to increase the availability of scientific and technical information in developing countries.
• Asia journals online
  "A portal to scholarly journals published in Bangladesh, Nepal, The Philippines, Vietnam, Sri Lanka, and Indonesia."
• Asian Studies WWW Virtual Library
  No longer maintained, but still a useful collection of links. From the Australian National University.
• Bangladesh Journals Online (BanglaJOL)
  "There are 64 journals now listed on BanglaJOL. There are 393 Tables of Contents listing 5426 articles. 4697 of the articles are available in full text." (June 2011).
• Bioline International
  Open access to quality research journals in the biosciences published in developing countries.
• Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ)
  "Aims to be comprehensive and cover all open access scientific and scholarly journals that use a quality control system to guarantee the content."
• EASYPol
  "On-line resources for policy making." From FAO’s Policy Support Unit, which "develops, publishes and hosts freely downloadable resources to assist policy makers and analysts in the assessment and implementation of development policies. Policy findings, methodological guidelines and capacity development are presented through issue papers, analytical tools (software), case studies, and other conceptual and technical materials." See also EASYPol weblinks.
• The eGranary Digital Library
  Over 10,000,000 electronic texts of educational resources, aimed at the Developing World.
• Electronic journals and newspapers on South Asia
  From Columbia University Libraries.
• GDNet: Access to journals
  From the Global Development Network (GDNet). See especially GDNet BLDS Document Delivery Service, which delivers articles and book chapters at no cost to Southern institutions that are members of GDNet.
• Global Health Library
  From the WHO. Indexes medical and health literature, especially from Africa, Asia and Latin America. Provides cross searching of several other biomedical databases, including Medline and African Index Medicus (AIM).
• HINARI (WHO | Health InterNetwork Access to Research Initiative)
  Over 3750 biomedical and health journals titles available to health institutions in developing countries.
• Global Open Access Portal
  "Presents a current snapshot of the status of Open Access (OA) to scientific information around the world." Includes sections on access by regions and themes.
• JSTOR: African Access Initiative Participation
  The entire JSTOR archive available for any institution in an African country.
• Journals Online (JOL) .
  From INASP: International Network for the Availability of Scientific Publications. Links to databases of journals,
• Latin America Journals Online (LAMJOL)
  LAMJOL hosts journals from Nicaragua and Honduras and is primarily in Spanish, but does feature some English abstracts and tables of contents.
• LILACS
  "LILACS is the most important and comprehensive index of scientific and technical literature of Latin America and the Caribbean. For 25 years contributing to increase visibility, access and quality of health information in the Region."
• Nepal Journals Online (NepJOL)
  "There are now 60 journals listed on NepJOL. There are 268 Tables of Contents listing 3863 articles. 3209 of the articles are available in full text." (June 2011).
• OARE: Online Access to Research in the Environment
  Environmental science research journal articles available to developing countries.
• Philippines Journals Online (PhilJOL)
  "There are 42 journals listed on PhilJOL. There are 162 Tables of Contents listing 1528 articles. 1204 of the articles are available in full text." (June 2011).
• PubMed Central (PMC).
  The U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) free digital archive of biomedical and life sciences journal literature. Also PubMed, citations and abstracts to biomedical and other life science journal literature, with some full text links.
• SciELO: the Scientific Electronic Library Online.
  Selected Brazilian scientific journals.
• The Southeast Asian Serials Index.
  From the Australian National University.
• Sri Lanka Journals OnLine (SLJOL)
  "There are 37 journals listed on SLJOL. There are 244 Tables of Contents listing 2426 articles. 2274 of the articles are available in full text." (June 2011).
• TEEAL: The Essential Electronic Agricultural Library
  130+ agricultural journals. Works offline.
• Vietnam Journals Online (VJOL)
  Site mainly in Vietnamese.
• The WHO AFRO Library
  The WHO Regional Office for Africa (AFRO) Health Sciences Library and Documentation Centre. Manages Afrolib, African Index Medicus (AIM), and WHOLIS (WHO-HQ Library Database).
• WSIS Knowledge Communities: Open Access
  Community "to discuss issues surrounding Open Access, free access to and dissemination of scholarly and scientific information."

Research repositories

• OpenDOAR
  Directory of Open Access Repositories.
• RePEc (Research Papers in Economics)
  Freely available database of economics research papers.
• Social Science Research Network (SSRN)
  Disseminates social science research via specialized research networks.
• United Nations Economic Commision for Africa (UNECA) institutional repository
  A repository for "published materials such as flagship publications, journal articles, conference proceedings, technical reports, mission reports, annual reports, working papers, speeches and other grey literature, all which outline important research or decisions that have been made on the economic and social developmental aspects in Africa" over a period of 50 years.

Alerting services

• My Alerts
  Alerting service from the Informaworld journals and reference works site
• Zetoc
  Access to the British Library's Electronic Table of Contents of around 20,000 current journals and around 16,000 conference proceedings published per year. The database covers 1993 to date, and is updated on a daily basis. Email alerting service available; click on Zetoc Alert

Research Support

• AuthorAID
  "A global research community that provides networking, mentoring, resources and training for researchers in developing countries."
• Outcome Mapping Learning Community
  "Outcome mapping (OM) is a methodology for planning and assessing development programming that is oriented towards change and social transformation. OM provides a set of tools to design and gather information on the outcomes, defined as behavioural changes, of the change process."

Development and International Libraries

• EL@ND
  A single search to 12 databases of development information.
• International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA)
• ILO (International Labour Organization) Library
• Jolis
  IMF/World Bank Joint Library
• London School of Economics Library
• SOAS (School of Oriental and African Studies) Library
• Social Science Library, University of Oxford
• UNBISnet
  The online catalogue of the Dag Hammarskjold Library at UN Headquarters and the Library of the UN Office at Geneva.

How to ...

Accessing journals

• Accessing journals in African universities
  From the Association of Commonwealth Universities.

Electronic resources - guide for setting-up

• The Acquisition & Collection Development Section of the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) has produced the IFLA Electronic Resource Guide http://www.ifla.org/en/publications/ifla-electronic-resource-guide  The purpose of this Guide is to help develop an awareness of the key issues that every library will need to consider and address in developing an e-portfolio.

Funding Opportunities

• Funding Information From the GDNet (Global Development Network).

• Global Libraries
  From the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation; details about how grants are awarded on the For Grant Seekers page.
• Funding
  DFID's research funding scheme.

Internet tutorials and guides

• Internet Detective
  Internet tutorial.
• TONIC - The Online Netskills Interactive Course
  A course on using the internet produced by Netskills.
• Training resources
  From Phil Bradley's site (Internet Consultant) . "Information on search engines, searching the internet, keeping up to date on internet events, free articles on internet searching and web page and web site design."

Toolkits

• Manuals and toolkits
  From Eldis.
• Toolkits
  From the Global Development Network (GDN).

IT literacy

• The Information Literacy Website
  Resources (including news, case studies, examples of best practice and freely available toolkits) on information literacy.
• InfoSuss, the information literacy tutorial
  From University of Sussex Library (general, not restricted to development).
• ItrainOnline
  Computer and internet training resources for developing countries.

Organisations

• INASP: International Network for the Availability of Scientific Publications
  Network for making scientific information available to developing world. The PERI (Programme for the Enhancement of Research Information) section includes a directory of Free and open access resources.
• ITOCA (Information Training and Outreach Centre for Africa)
  Provides support for the TEEAL, AGORA, HINARI and OARE research information programmes, and IT skills capacity building for African information specialists.
• Research for Development
  R4D is a free access on-line database containing information about research programmes supported by DFID. R4D provides the latest information about research funded by DFID, including news, case studies and details of current and past research in over 20,000 project and document records.

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