Seed Grants for Research Capacity: The Elsevier Foundation at Publishers for Development

Since 2007, the Elsevier Foundation has worked to build research infrastructure and capacity through annual grants to libraries in developing countries. Projects have tackled everything from preserving unique legacies through digitization, supporting the creation of online national  repositories, medical library needs assessments, librarian-led outreach to rural clinics to establishing an African center for evidence based health care.  The goal has been to fund unique ideas to enable expansion and further fundraising.

Ylann Schemm, head of Elsevier’s Corporate Responsibility program, attended the 6th Publishers for Development conference: her presentation can be seen here. The presentation offers a brief look into some of the most impactful projects and how they support librarians in their pivotal roles as research ambassadors in developing countries.

Publishers for Development (PfD) was launched in 2008 and is a joint initiative of The Association of Commonwealth Universities (ACU) and INASP.

It is a forum for information and discussion around the importance of access to information for development. Through a range of activities, it will explore some of the unique challenges developing country libraries, researchers and publishers experience and also provide an opportunity for publishers to keep up-to-date and feed their input into the work all parties are undertaking to lessen the digital divide.

Publishers play an important role in contributing to high quality library and information services. They are also a vital component in the global research communication cycle, especially in encouraging the wider dissemination of research and ideas from all members of the international scientific and academic community in which developing country research is currently underrepresented.

Read more about Publishers for Development