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Collaboration and functional innovation

Why CABI chose Literatum to boost research and learning in agriculture and the environment

July 13, 2022

Ensuring that users around the world can access vital information across a variety of content types is not an easy job—but it’s a challenge Atypon was delighted to take on when CABI partnered with the company to design, build and host their new website, launching in 2022.

“In Atypon, we found an open-minded partner willing to collaborate with us to better help our researchers.”

CABI is an international, intergovernmental, not-for-profit organization that improves people’s lives worldwide by providing information and applying scientific expertise to solve problems in agriculture and the environment.

CABI puts information, skills, and tools into the hands of those working towards food security, climate resilience, safeguarding biodiversity, sustainable economic development through agriculture, and more. Any surplus from CABI’s publishing enterprises is invested into international development projects across the world that support farmers and others working hard to improve livelihoods, such as CABI’s Plantwise Plus project.

As you’d expect, the scale of CABI’s content is vast and varied, encompassing books and journals; the Plantwise Knowledge Bank; apps and data sheets; tools for librarians, researchers, and students; content and tools designed for farmers and extension workers; and their flagship product, CAB Abstracts. While already available to users, these resources are currently spread across different platforms, making the user experience problematic.

Preview of new CABI topics page, showing the first row of topics: Animal Sciences, Aquatic Sciences, Biotechnology, and Economics

 

CABI was attracted to Atypon’s Literatum publishing platform because its modular architecture is flexible enough to bring many content types together in a single place—ensuring a smooth, superior user experience, no matter how, where, or from what device users access CABI information.

Access is key

With a few weeks to go until the Phase One launch of CABI’s new site, we chatted with Lieke Boerefijn-van Schaaijk, Platform Manager at CABI, about their migration experience so far and which elements of the new site they’re most excited about.

“There were many issues we had to consider when choosing Atypon as our partner for the new site,” Lieke explains. “Our audience is global, and people are using the content in many different ways—such as accessing it from their phone literally in a field. So access is a key concern. We also have a wide range of topics in many different formats, and we wanted to bring them all together on one platform.”

CABI's case study databases offer examples of real life experiences and expertise that provide support for study, research and practice. Showing Animal Behaviour and Welfare Cases, One Health Cases, Tourism Cases.

A collaborative approach

Lieke describes working with Atypon as a collaborative process and credits the success of the new site to their cooperative approach and flexible platform.

“In Atypon, we found an open-minded partner willing to collaborate with us to better help our researchers,” she told us. “Beyond books and journals, we have so many other content types, and because Atypon can support all of these, everything can sit on one platform.”

Lieke also emphasized “Atypon’s willingness to develop innovative functionality, especially around advanced search functions and visualization of search results,” which she says “will allow CABI to support researchers and librarians in a far better way.”

Insights, insights, insights!

CABI’s new site is due to fully launch at the end of 2022—but the launch is just the beginning! CABI particularly looks forward to delving into Atypon Insights to benefit from much more information on their users’ behavior with their content than they currently have, allowing them to better map users’ engagement with, and pathways through, CABI’s content.

“We expect to learn a lot about our users and how they interact with our content and tools, which will help us optimize the overall user experience,” explains Lieke. “This will enable users to better find the information they need. It will also help us to create and disseminate content that’s more relevant for our users.”

Having all their content in one place for the first time, Lieke says, “will not only have huge advantages for our users but also simplify our internal production workflows and allow us to track our users’ journey from start to finish.”

So, after the launch, what’s next? “We look forward to seeing our users explore all CABI’s content on this single new easy-to-use platform, allowing them to identify and select the best data and evidence within an ever-growing flow of scientific information. We will build on the foundations of this new platform by further enhancing it for research and discovery.”

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Welcome to the Atypon community, CABI! We look forward to being your partners in whatever comes next!

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