SciDev.Net

Developing countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America will gain free access to more than 65 Nature journals, it was announced last week (22 April).

Nature Publishing Group (NPG) and INASP (International Network for the Availability of Scientific Publications) have teamed up to make NPG's collection of biomedical journals available to more than 20 partner countries, as part of INASP's Programme for the Enhancement of Research Information (PERI).

Journals in this collection include Nature, the Nature Clinical Practice series, NPGresearch journals and the Nature Reviews journals in life sciences and medicine.

Lucy Browse, head of information delivery at INASP, said that the decision came as the result of requests from their country coordination teams to include NPG biomedical journals within PERI.

"[This] inclusion will be of huge benefit to researchers within our partner countries and also strengthen the resource availability within the digital libraries," says Browse.

"It means that researchers in approximately 600 libraries [around the world] will potentially be able to access [these journals]."

Browse told SciDev.Net that INASP cooperates with over 50 publishers and aggregators to negotiate free or heavily subsidised access for their partner countries, helping to bridge gaps in research communication.

"At INASP, our mission is to enhance the research communication cycle within our partner and network countries … Our activities enable access to research information to be increased in a sustainable way and also encourage the research outputs and communication of colleagues in developing countries to reach a global audience," she says.

According to the NPG and INASP, countries will have access to 2008 content, as well as content published between 2004–2007.