Award for Innovative International Initiatives

The Department of Applied Economics and University Libraries created AgEcon Search, an international digital library visited by 15,000 researchers daily from 170 countries, as a way to collect and distribute full-text research free of charge.

The digital library covers a variety of areas in agricultural and applied economics, including agribusiness, food security, energy, the environment, and international trade and development. Importantly, the resource increases exposure for research relating to and from the Global South, in areas with few resources to purchase high-quality research or to distribute the research produced by their experts.

Although the initial target audience of AgEcon Search was University of Minnesota researchers and their colleagues in surrounding states, the library has grown into an international resource with 150,000 papers from 250 organizations in 40 countries. In 2019, users downloaded 22 million documents from the repository.