ARDI is the Access to Research for Development and Innovation program, a partnership between the
World Intellectual Property Organization
The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO; (OMPI)) is one of the 15 specialized agencies of the United Nations (UN). Pursuant to the 1967 Convention Establishing the World Intellectual Property Organization, WIPO was created to pr ...
and major scientific and technical publishers.
ARDI provides access to nearly 10,000 online journals, books and reference works for patent offices, academic and research institutions in 107 developing and
least developed countries
The least developed countries (LDCs) are developing countries listed by the United Nations that exhibit the lowest indicators of socioeconomic development. The concept of LDCs originated in the late 1960s and the first group of LDCs was listed b ...
as of December 2013.
The stated objective of ARDI is to "promote the integration of developing countries into the global knowledge economy, allowing them to more fully realize their creative potential."
ARDI is part of
Research4Life, the collective name for four programs -
HINARI
Hinari Access to Research for Health Programme was set up by the World Health Organization and major publishers to enable developing countries to access collections of biomedical and health literature. There are up to 15,000 e-journals and up to ...
(focusing on health),
AGORA
The agora (; , romanized: ', meaning "market" in Modern Greek) was a central public space in ancient Ancient Greece, Greek polis, city-states. The literal meaning of the word "agora" is "gathering place" or "assembly". The agora was the center ...
(focusing on agriculture),
OARE (focusing on environment), and ARDI (focusing on applied science and technology). Research4Life provides developing countries with free or low cost access to academic and professional peer-reviewed content online.
History
ARDI was launched by the World Intellectual Property Organization in July 2009 in cooperation with 12 major publishers - American Association for the Advancement of Science; American Institute of Physics; Elsevier; Institute of Physics; John Wiley & Sons; Oxford University Press; National Academy of Sciences; Nature Publishing Group; Royal Society of Chemistry; Sage Publications; Springer Science+Business Media; and Taylor & Francis.
Eligibility
Institutions eligible to participate in ARDI are: patent offices, academic institutions, and research institutions. All members of a registered institution (researchers, teaching and administrative staff, students) and its on-site visitors are eligible to use the resources to which access is provided through ARDI.
References
External links
*{{Official website, http://www.wipo.int/ardi
Research4Life Partnership
Academic publishing
Open access projects