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Online Access to Research in the Environment (OARE), an international public-private consortium coordinated by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), Yale University, and leading science and technology publishers, enables developing countries to gain free or low cost access to one of the world’s largest collections of proprietary environmental science literature.

Launched in October 2006, OARE has a mission to improve the quality and effectiveness of environmental research, education and training in low-income countries. In doing so, OARE will help achieve four primary development objectives:

Growth in the number of national scholars and experts who will, through their knowledge and reputation, integrate into and facilitate the development of more progressive, science-driven policy development processes, regulatory frameworks, and governance structures.

Strengthen the intellectual foundation of universities so as to enable faculty to perform research on a par with peers in industrialized countries, develop their own publishing record, and enable students to conduct research and seek education in new and emerging subjects.

Build the capacity of independent national organizations to gather, interpret, and disseminate to the public global scientific research.

Increase the participation of developing-country scholars and experts in international debates relating to the management of global natural resources.

Many organizations are participating in the OARE consortium. Partners providing scientific content through the program include the world's leading publishing houses and the world's most prestigious scientific societies and associations. Today, over a thousand scientific journal titles owned and published by OARE partners are now available to environment institutions in 70 eligible low income countries.

Research in a wide range of disciplines is available through OARE, including biotechnology, botany, climate change, ecology, energy, environmental chemistry, environmental economics, environmental engineering and planning, environmental law and policy, environmental toxicology and pollution, geography, geology, hydrology, meteorology, oceanography, urban planning, zoology, and many others. OARE also provides access to important Abstract and Index Research Databases (A&I Databases), intellectual tools the scientific and professional community uses to search for specific information within thousands of scholarly publications.

OARE leverages proven information and communication technologies, recent digitization of vast quantities of proprietary scientific literature, and an international public-private co-operative structure to help reduce the North-South scientific gap, an objective of both the United Nations Agenda and Millennium Development Goals, with unparalleled efficiency and scale. The OARE portal is built and managed in close cooperation with initiatives launched by the WHO servicing the medical and health community HINARI, and FAO and Cornell University servicing the agricultural and food science community AGORA.

Enabled by technology and guided by shared vision, the OARE consortium is increasing in the number and diversity of its participating organizations and in the richness of its scientific holdings. The partners encourage developing-country organizations to explore the resources available in OARE, and encourage institutions interested in joining the consortium to contact them to learn more about how they can contribute to the OARE mission and UN millennium development goals (MDGs).