Stichting eIFL.net

Stichting eIFL.net (EIFL) is an international not-for-profit organisation with a base in Europe and a global network of partners. We work with libraries around the world to enable sustainable access to high quality digital information for people in developing and transition countries. Founded in 1999, EIFL began by advocating for affordable access to commercial e-journals for academic and research libraries in Central and Eastern Europe. Today, EIFL partners with libraries and library consortia in more than 60 developing and transition countries in Africa, Asia and Europe. Our work has also expanded to include other programmes designed to increase access to knowledge.

EIFL’s mission is to enable access to knowledge through libraries in developing and transition countries for sustainable economic and social development. EIFL’s unique approach is to partner with libraries organised in national library consortia (groups of libraries that share common goals) thereby effectively reaching millions of people. Our partners in Eastern Europe are Consortium of Estonian Libraries Network (ELNET), State agency "Culture information systems" in Latvia, Lithuanian Research Library Consortium (LMBA), Poznan Foundation of Scientific Libraries, and Consortium of Slovene Electronic Collections (COSEC). 

• Access to Knowledge for Education, Learning and Research – ensuring well-resourced libraries, modern ICT infrastructure and skilled staff to provide essential support to students and scholars. EIFL programmes in this area include: e-resource licensing, open access, copyright for libraries, and free and open software for libraries.
• Access to Knowledge for Sustainable Livelihoods – helping to transform lives through innovative services in public libraries. EIFL's Public Library Innovation Program provides support for activities in this area.

EIFL-Open Access (OA) programme has been part of our activity since 2005. Through the EIFL-OA programme, we advocate for the adoption of open access policies and mandates by research funding agencies, universities and research organisations.  Through capacity building, we enable libraries to launch and sustain open access repositories in order to maximise the visibility and usage of research output.  We also encourage open access publishing initiatives in developing and transition countries and provide updates on open access to data and open educational resources.

The EIFL-OA Programme

• Advocates for open access polices in EIFL network, provides consultations and advise;
• Builds capacities to set up open access repositories and to ensure their long term sustainability;
• Educates the research communities and students about changing scholarly communication landscape and open access business models;
• Promotes open access publishing initiatives;
• Encourages knowledge sharing through peer-to-peer learning, by identifying best practice case studies, and organising regional and national training events.
• Empowers library professionals, scientists and scholars, educators and students to become open access advocates.

Our Achievements

• The EIFL Open Access (OA) programme has been chosen as the winner of the 2011 SPARC Europe Award for Outstanding Achievements in Scholarly Communications.
• EIFL-OA and partner countries outreach efforts have led to higher visibility and impact of scholarly publications, international co-operation, and community building.
• There are 800+ open repositories and 4,000+ open access journals in EIFL partner countries.
• Open access policies  that ensure that research funded by institutions is made freely available have now been adopted by 80 organisations in the EIFL Network.
• There are EIFL-OA Coordinators in all EIFL partner countries that benefit from EIFL training and support in order to conduct  national awareness raising and advocacy campaigns.
• EIFL –OA plays a leading role in advocacy at the international level; we are a co-organiser of International Open Access Week; a founding member of the Confederation of Open Access Repositories (COAR).

• Rima Kupryte
• Iryna Kuchma: iryna.kuchma[at]eifl.net
• Gwen Franck: gwen.franck[at]eifl.net
• Andrius Krisciunas