CABI Unlocks Nearly a Century Of Scientific Discoveries

Forgotten Studies Help Scientists Address Modern Medical and Social Issues

Challenge

CAB International Publishing (CABI), 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 existed only as deteriorating hard copies. Researchers produced an enormous number of discoveries during this period, forming the foundation for the fields of medicine, the environment, development and economics. Unfortunately, many of these important discoveries had been forgotten in library archives, and some modern researchers have even recreated past studies. They were simply unaware that their work duplicated previous studies until they presented it for public consumption.

CABI decided to address this challenge, in order to provide today’s scientists with all the pertinent historical information to address pressing modern issues such as biotechnology, germ warfare, food production and global warming. 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.

Simply abstracting and publishing current papers was enough to keep CABI’s staff busy around-the-clock. Hiring personnel to work on 75 years of historic records was neither cost-efficient nor time-effective...