AGORA

AGORA provides free or low-cost access to thousands of major scientific journals,  leading e-books and other information resources covering agriculture, fisheries, food, nutrition, veterinary science and related biological, environmental and social sciences in public institutions across the world.

The agora content portal can be accessed here: https://agora.research4life.org.

To search through AGORA specific resources, users should utilize the ‘content’ tab located at the top of the content portal homepage. Users can click on the down arrow located next to the word ‘content’ and choose journals, books, reference sources, databases, free collections, publishers, recent resources or subjects based on the resources they are looking for. By utilizing the ‘content’ tab, users are ensuring that their search results are AGORA specific resources and will benefit those looking specifically for resources in food, agriculture, environmental science and related social sciences. If users are interested in seeing results from all five of the Research4Life programmes, they can utilize the large search box at the top of the content portal homepage.

The Research4Life access offer includes two groups of countries, areas, or territories: Group A and Group B. 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.

Users need a computer connected to the internet. The AGORA, ARDI, GOALI, Hinari, and OARE 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.

Eligible institutions are: agricultural extension centres, government of ces, healthcare centres, local non-governmental organizations, national libraries, national universities, professional schools (agriculture, engineering, medicine, pharmacy, public health, etc.), research institutes and teaching hospitals located in an eligible country, area or territory. The following categories of institutions are not eligible for Research4Life, even if the of ce is located in an eligible country, area or territory: commercial companies and institutions, individual persons, international or regional organizations, and member-based associations and societies.

Please ask your institution’s IT group to add permission for the following domains:

• Login.research4life.org
• Sts.research4life.org
• Stsr4l.who.int
• Extranet.who.int
• www.research4life.org

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 AGORA, ARDI, GOALI, Hinari, and OARE 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.

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 login 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 ‘InPrivate Browsing’.
• Once in the private/incognito window, you can open a Research4Life session by connecting to login.research4life.org 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 for your institution to use its IPs to login to Research4Life without your username, we need you to register the xed 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 update your IP address list in the IP registry and inform us at [email protected] when the details are correct.

The authentication system may be logging you in based on your institution’s IP addresses, if those are on le with our partners at IP registry.

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 to update your institutional details, we need to regain communication with the of cial contacts at your institution. Please contact us at [email protected] with complete information. We will need offcialis from your institution to request us to resend the ID and password to the new librarian and/or director.

Please inform Research4Life helpdesk at [email protected] that you are leaving and provide us with the name and email address of the new contact person.

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.

If you know the name of the journal that you wish to access after entering one of the programmes, go to ‘Find journals by title’ and click on the letter that corresponds to the rst letter of the journal name. This will bring you to a list of all journals that begin with that letter and that are offered through the relevant programme. Once you locate the title you are searching for, click again, and you will be directed to the journal’s homepage.

Detailed searching for articles by title, author or subject can be done through the search bar on the opening page of each programme portal.

Your institution can transfer USD 1500 directly into the WHO bank account provided in the invoice.

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.

If your institution has not paid the annual fee with Research4Life, it may interest you to know that some publishers allow free resource access to all Research4Life registered users in A and B Group countries.

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 a 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] a payment has been made to avoid loss of access at the end of the trial period.

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).

No. Payment is for a calendar year, from 1 January to 31 December, 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.

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.

Yes, one payment for Research4Life will grant access to all the programmes (AGORA, ARDI, GOALI, Hinari, and OARE).

Access to the collections may only be provided from computers or other digital installations owned by, or under the direct control of, the institution, or from personal computers owned by the employees, faculty or students of the institution.

No. However, you may download and save limited numbers of articles or chapters from any journal issue or book if the selection does not exceed 15 percent of its contents.

Research4Life extracts statistics from logins by user names. Statistics can be requested once a year by the institution.

Yes, Research4Life includes thousands of online books. Please contact us directly [email protected].

Yes, depending on subject and relevance review. Please contact us directly at [email protected].

For subscription-based journals, please contact us directly at [email protected]. For open access journal(s), Research4Life works with DOAJ and will only list journals that have been accepted for inclusion in the directory. We recommend that you apply to them for inclusion after checking whether your journal full ls all of the criteria. If you have any questions on the application process, you can contact DOAJ at [email protected]. Once listed in DOAJ, open access journal titles from relevant subjects are exported from DOAJ and uploaded into the relevant Research4Life content portals.

You may work with eligible national institutions who need up-to-date scienti c information: be an ambassador! Working with government agencies, local non-pro t organizations, local research organizations and universities is an important aspect of our work at FAO. In many countries, access to quality and up-to-date research resources is still scarce and supporting the local partners in this area of work can play an important role. Many countries have free access, others can access the resources at a low cost.

The AGORA team at FAO will support you with the appropriate information and budget estimates. In an eligible country, you could choose to organize an information campaign to ensure all relevant eligible institutions register for the programme, or organize capacity development activities to ensure the institutions can make effective use of the programmes.

In a Group B country, you could add sponsorship for institutions to your budget to help them cover the cost of USD 1 500 to access Research4Life (all programmes) for one year. For more information or support for proposal writing, contact [email protected]

AGORA provides brochures in Arabic, English, French and Spanish and they are available electronically at http://www.fao.org/agora/ background/publications. If you wish to have them in print for your institutional use, please email us at [email protected] for further communication.

FAO staff can access the Research4life programme and resources in a country that is not eligible for Research4Life. However, national partners in ineligible countries will not be able to register. Those not eligible for full access to Research4life can still freely access abstracts of all the journals and the free full-text journals linked from the programmes. A username is not needed to access these resources. Look for the ‘Free collections’ menu and the ‘Accessible Content’ tabs of the portal at http://agora-journals.fao.org/

Even if an institution is not eligible to register for Research4Life, it can help spread the word to other institutions (ministries, research institutes, universities) that are eligible.