CABI Unlocks Nearly a Century Of Scientific Discoveries

Forgotten Studies Help Scientists Address Modern Medical and Social Issues

Challenge

CAB International Publishing, a leader in publishing applied life science research since 1908, has been digitizing its records since the early 1980s. However, the huge volumes of important research papers, books, papers and other literature written from 1908 to 1983 then existed only in deteriorating paper documents. This period saw researchers produce an enormous number of discoveries that form the foundation for today's fields of medicine, environment, crops, development and economics. Yet many important discoveries from this period have been forgotten in library archives, while modern researchers have even recreated past data, unaware that their work duplicated previous studies until they presented their work for public consumption.

CABI saw this as a challenge that needed to be addressed. The publisher owned the rights to more than four million records from 9,000 peer-reviewed journals, along with 2,500 books, conference proceedings and other papers. While some of these records were supported by well-written abstracts, many others contained none at all. Even worse, many important papers were overlooked because their abstracts had not been translated into English. CABI recognized that they needed to make these historic records readily available, so that they could be researched along with post-1983 papers to help scientists address pressing modern issues such as biotechnology, germ warfare, food production and global warming...