Elsevier contributes its content to researchers in developing countries bringing them closer to their peers and their individual research communities through various international initiatives.
 
Due to the overwhelming success of two of the initiatives - HINARI and AGORA, Elsevier has recently stretched the content fields and increased the number of journals made available for free to developing countries through both these programmes and also the new OARE research programme.

Elsevier is proud to be involved with the initiatives listed below. More information on all these initiatives can be found on our corporate website.

Elsevier is one of the founding health publishers of HINARI (Health InterNetwork Access to Research Initiative). A UN-based initiative, HINARI provides online access to major journals, without charge, to public institutions in developing countries. As of May 2007, 2,500 institutions in 109 countries have registered to receive free or low cost access to 1,200 Elsevier journals via HINARI and these institutes have downloaded over 100,000 full-text downloads a month in the past 2 years. In 2006, Elsevier journals were responsible for a third of all downloads via the entire HINARI collection, demonstrating the importance and quality of Elsevier titles throughout the world.

Inspired by the success of HINARI, the UN's Food and Agricultural Organization established AGORA (Access to Global Online Research in Agriculture), a programme that provides access to high quality relevant information in agriculture and related fields to developing countries. Elsevier offers 230 of the 747 journals included free or at a low cost via AGORA, generating over 10,000 downloads a month in the last 2 years.

A group of about 200 scientific publishers and associations, including Elsevier, have banded together to provide developing nations with free or reduced cost access to scientific literature about the environment in a project called OARE - Online Access to Research in the Environment.  The project was developed by the UN Environment Program, Yale University, and publishers.  Under the initiative, about 1200 public and nonprofit environmental institutions in 100 developing countries in Asia, Latin America, Africa, the Pacific, the Caribbean and Eastern Europe will have access to peer-reviewed environmental journal literature and A&I services through a secure portal on the Web that will be offered in English, Spanish and French.  A large number of societies from all parts of the world are also participating.  Elsevier offers 1,013 journals free via OARE.

In 2007, an Elsevier grant of $80,000 enabled the Medical Library Association’s (MLA) new Librarians Without Borders program to sponsor Lenny Rhine, University of Florida Librarian Emeritus to stage eight onsite workshops and one distance learning course in 2007. The pilot distance learning course, called the E-Library Training Initiative was launched in March 2007. Follow up training materials are being developed in local languages, which has proven to be the surest way of increasing usage of the scholarly publications available via HOA. These collaborative efforts involve Librarians Without Borders, Elsevier, HINARI, the Information Training and Outreach Centre for Africa (ITOCA), the WHO and FAO.

In collaboration with the ICTP (the Abdus Salam International Center for Theoretic Physics) and their pioneering E-Journals Delivery Service, Elsevier has provided scientists in developing countries with free access to Elsevier journals in physics, mathematics and computer science.

Created in 2002, the Elsevier Foundation has awarded over 40 grants worth over half a million dollars to non-profit organizations with knowledge-centred missions, values and programs.

The Innovative Libraries in Developing Countries (ILDC) Program awards grants to library programs in the developing world for innovative systems and services that improve access to STM information. In 2006, grants were awarded to non-profit organizations in China, India or Southeast Asia.

The Elsevier Scholars Program awards grants to support the efforts of the academic and research community to address the fundamental challenge of balancing childcare and family responsibilities with the demanding careers of science and technology. The program is focused on doctoral candidates and scientists in the first five years of their post-doctoral careers.

The Elsevier Employee Matching Gift Program matches employee donations on a one-for-one basis to the charity of their choice. Since it re-launched in 2006, the program has matched more than 500 gifts to more than 300 organisations.