Access to journals.Charitable organisation rates?

jimdeans

Hoping some of you might be able to answer this.

My partner (a medic) and me(a scientist) are taking a year out of our work next year to help set up a charity in a developing country.It will be a medical charity and I'm involved in setting up a testing service for HIV and a few other bugs. There's a few scientists and medics involved, as well as the money/marketing people etc.

There's a very generous initial outlay by a number of large private donors from the business world, and the aim is that the charity will eventually become more or less self sufficient.

Anyway, we're hoping to have a research arm, too. We're gonig to want to look at prevalence and disease burden etc etc in the region.

\i'm so used to logging onto my computer at work and accessing papers. But we've been talking about the need to access full text articles. I've no idea where to even start with this. Does anyone know if any of the publishers do special rates for charities/NGOs? Or, if not, how much would it cost to subscribe to a variety of medical/biomedical journals?

I'll go contacting publishers myself. BUt just curious if anyone knows whether it's prohibitively expensive, or whether charities are already donig this. I'm going to try and set up collaborations with the local(ish) uni, so I might be able to piggy-back onto their network. but I'm not sure yet. This is all very much in it's infency.

Turbulent Bill

jimdeans wrote: »

I'm going to try and set up collaborations with the local(ish) uni, so I might be able to piggy-back onto their network. but I'm not sure yet. This is all very much in it's infency.

I think the university link would we a good starting point. You'll probably still have to get the publishers' approval though ('We allow jimdeans to access our stuff at blah blah university...') as the uni's license is normally just for students and staff, not 3rd parties, and they're worried about copyright infringement.

opinion guy

Sounds like quite the adventure!!

Maybe try linking in with one of the uni's here that has a Epidemiology department and get them interested in collaborating on a project and maybe you'll be able to gain access to their library ?

Does your venture have a name ?

jimdeans

opinion guy wrote: »

Sounds like quite the adventure!!

Maybe try linking in with one of the uni's here that has a Epidemiology department and get them interested in collaborating on a project and maybe you'll be able to gain access to their library ?

Does your venture have a name ?

Not yet, we just have money so far.

Problem with linking up with local unis is that the donors are based in continental Europe, so the clinic/small lab will be based in a township. But the donors want us spending time in Europe when we're not on site, so we can do the research.
I'm going out there in november, and one thing I'll try and do is make contacts in the local uni. But I'll also be moving around Europe a little bit, giving reports to donors and co-ordinating with the education branch of this thing, so I reckon I'll need access in a variety of locations.

I've emailed the publishing houses, with no replies yet (probably because of the "do you have any special rates for charitable organisations" component!).

I've an interested collaborator in the UK. But that's all just informal chat for now, and i need to progress as though I won't have collaborators, especially for the first year.

we have access to almost everything in my current job, and I've never even thought about how that happens! So I'll hunt donw the person who arranges that on monday. I just thought there might be a simple answer somewhere.

opinion guy

jimdeans wrote: »

we have access to almost everything in my current job, and I've never even thought about how that happens! So I'll hunt donw the person who arranges that on monday. I just thought there might be a simple answer somewhere.

Maybe you can talk your job into allowing you keep access ?