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DUBAI: Dubai-based startup business edutech has launched a digital library for researchers in Saudi Arabia – the first membership-based library for scholarly literature of its kind in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) .

Academic literature is usually hidden behind expensive pay walls or restricted to those associated with large organizations. Now Zendy, developed by Knowledge E, offers users accessible access to scholarly works from around the world.

Following the UK Vision 2030 development agenda and its efforts to foster a culture of study, innovation and entrepreneurship, Zendy will provide students, professionals and entertainers with access to thousands of articles , e-books and academic resources.

“Zendy is a great online library that is available to everyone in the area,” Kamran Kardan, founder of E Science and CEO, told Arab News.

“If you look at the current status of how you can access academic content, books, journals and related literature, it’s very heavy,” he said.

“You have to be part of a larger institution, university or organization like the ministry of health, or a place where they can access the content. And not all institutions can access the many publishers available out there. “

Zendy’s goal is to break down the barriers to scholarly discovery by giving people access to the world’s latest research and literature – drawing inspiration from the evolution of music and television practice.

“The whole idea came from what’s happening to the entertainment and music industry, like Netflix and iTunes, and its application in academic content, making it affordable,” said Kardan. “So the idea was to open all that content and make it accessible, at a monthly membership or annual cost. ”

With publishing experience at Oxford University Press in the UK, Kardan has carried out his mission to promote open access and help higher education institutions discover new research strategies through a variety of business frameworks. He moved to Dubai 15 years ago to promote scholarly reach among universities, businesses and consortia across the region.

“When I moved in 2006, this was the beginning of the transition from the world of print to electronics,” he said. “Most libraries were on the shelves full of books and magazines and, if you can think of a researcher trying to find something, it was a big effort to go through the indexes between that you had.

“Finding all the relevant information you were looking for was a job for him.”

In the years that followed, Kardan worked with consortia in Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Egypt to provide academic access at the national level. “A lot of universities didn’t have that opportunity in those days,” he said.

“I remember a university in Kuwait where I had one of the most complete journal collections from one of the major publishers and going through that transition of moving everything online – giving more digital libraries to the area as the story of those days. ”

In addition to the evolution of digital infrastructure itself, publishing had to account for the slow pace of cultural change, with many people still prefering paper-based books for all sorts of reasons, including into the simple beauty of rubbing and smelling.

To date, most of Zendy ‘s content is only available in English, although some has been offered in French and other languages, with the aim of soon diversifying linguistically.

“The idea is to have a complete online library at everyone’s fingertips,” said Kardan. “It’s no longer an issue that you can’t afford, no matter where you are located, unless you’re part of a larger institution. We will not target institutions, we will target individuals. “

After its launch in Jordan in 2019, Zendy has expanded to the UAE, Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, Bahrain and, from this month, will be available in Saudi Arabia. Since then the online library has gathered thousands of users across the Arab region, hosting over 120,000 publications including more than 30,000 journals and 30,000 e-books.

Zendy also allows users to easily save searches, extract citations and navigate by material type, topic, publication title, language and more.

“You can review, find the article, download the PDF and use as many as you like,” said Kardan.

“We would like to get more publishers, and this is something that is growing. We have three of the top five publishers in the world and you may think that, for publishers with business models with organizations, it is difficult to move and make everything accessible to everyone.

“So it’s also a big step for publishers and that’s why we want to break this barrier.”

To access content, users sign up for a free trial period before choosing between a monthly or annual subscription. Zendy’s business model is based on revenue sharing with usage-based publishers. And, true to Kardan’s ideas, some of the content will be free to all.

“There are a number of free content that will be available in open access format worldwide in a few months’ time,” he said. “So people who are happy with free content can keep that. And then to access the higher-end content, users have to sign up for Zendy Plus, which is what’s currently available. “

Kardan hopes that Zendy will have a major impact on the countries of the MENA region, playing a role in the formation of diverse, knowledge-based societies and economies. He is confident that easy access to information, open to all, is one way of achieving this goal.

“We are also working on other ways to build that in terms of holding workshops in academia and capacity building,” he said. “No matter how small you are, you can still make a difference. Whatever we do as a company, we strive to bring about that change and impact and we believe that Zendy is one of those with the potential for global influence. ”

Although at an early stage in Saudi Arabia, subscribers include entrepreneurs and health care professionals, such as doctors and nurses. Kardan’s goal is to expand the platform into global activity to make content more accessible to many more people around the world.

There are also plans to include videos, book summaries and magazines.

“It’s really up to the readership in all of these areas and to move this world of literature online,” he said. “For me, it’s a success to look back and see what impact I could have on the people and society around me.”

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• Twitter: @CalineMalek