The first regional AGORA workshop took place in Chișinău, Republic of Moldova on 3-4 October.

The participants in front of the State Agrarian University of Moldova in Chișinău.

26 selected participants joined the workshop from five East European countries, Belarus, North Macedonia, Republic of Moldova, Serbia and Ukraine, and two countries from the Caucasus, Armenia and Georgia.

After a general introduction to Research4Life and its programmes, the participants shared their experiences and challenges on accessing scientific information, including agricultural sciences in their institutions and countries. This exercise helped melting the ice between the attendees, the workshop then continued with an extensive training on AGORA as a possible solution to facilitate access to recent peer-reviewed scientific research in the agricultural domain. This part included a practical session on how to use the interface, search features and how linked services like Google Scholar and Dimension can add to the experience with Research4Life.

One of the AGORA Team members during her presentation on Research4Life

Part of the training included a full immersion on advocacy skills for Research4Life to support librarians to act as ambassadors for Research4Life in their communities and institutions. The participants learned about useful materials on the Research4Life website, and various case studies. In addition, the training section of Research4Life was presented together with an outlook to upcoming online training opportunities.

The workshop included feedback sessions and how Research and AGORA can further support their users. The two-day event was an opportunity for the participants (and for the trainers as well!) to network among each other and to strengthen future collaborations.



The AGORA team of Research4Life wishes to thank all participants for their active participation and the State Agrarian University of Moldova (SAUM) for an excellent organization of the event.

The AGORA programme, set up by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN (FAO) together with major publishers, enables developing countries to gain access to an outstanding digital library collection in the fields of food, agriculture, environmental science and related social sciences. AGORA provides a collection of up to 14,500 key journals and up to 27,000 books in more than 115 countries. AGORA is designed to enhance the scholarship of the many thousands of students, faculty and researchers in agriculture and life sciences in the developing world. AGORA is one of the five programmes that make up Research4Life: AGORA, HINARI, OARE, ARDI and GOALI.