Research4Life
Introduction
Research4Life is a public-private partnership launched in 2002 to narrow the knowledge gap between high-income nations and the Global South by giving qualified, not-for-profit institutions in low- and middle-income countries free or very low-cost access to peer-reviewed scholarship. It is jointly steered by five UN agencies—WHO, FAO, UNEP, WIPO and ILO—together with Cornell and Yale University Libraries, the International Association of Scientific, Technical & Medical Publishers (STM) and more than 200 commercial and society publishers.
The initiative is delivered through five subject-focused programmes that sit under the Research4Life umbrella: HINARI (health), AGORA (agriculture and food sciences), OARE (environmental research), ARDI (applied science and technology for development and innovation) and GOALI (global justice and legal information). Each portal offers a dedicated search interface but shares a single authentication system, so registered users can move seamlessly across disciplines.
Scale has grown dramatically over two decades. As of early 2025, Research4Life provides online access to more than 200,000 journals, books and databases to around 11,500 institutions in 125 countries and territories, giving faculty, clinicians, policymakers and students a corpus comparable to that of the world’s wealthiest research universities.
Access alone is not enough, so the partnership invests heavily in capacity-building. A multilingual training portal, onsite workshops and a recurring five-week Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) help librarians, researchers and IT staff develop information-literacy, publishing and advocacy skills—ensuring the content is discovered, used and cited.
Evidence of impact is now quantifiable. A 2024 World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) study found that institutions joining HINARI and other Research4Life programmes recorded up to a 75 percent increase in research output, alongside higher participation in international clinical trials—clear indicators that equitable information access translates into tangible scholarly activity.
In short, Research4Life has evolved from a modest health-information pilot into a cornerstone of global research infrastructure, aligning publishers’ content, UN development mandates and local capacity-building to advance the Sustainable Development Goals and foster truly inclusive scholarly communication.
Welcome to Research4Life
University of Kelaniya