| |
Incorporating the leading bibliographic databases in life science information - CAB Abstracts and Global Health, the new CAB Direct offers a better experience for students and researchers as they search for important life science information. The content on CAB Direct has not changed, but the new design will improve its discoverability – saving researchers time and effort.
“Researcher behaviours and expectations are evolving, and the new CAB Direct has been created to ensure we are evolving with them,” said Cristina Ashby, Product Development Manager at CABI. “New technologies have offered an excellent opportunity to create a better, more intuitive and effective product."
Enhancements include:
• An acceleration of the operating speed of the platform, and of the return of search results;
• MyCABDirect – a personalised area where users can set-up email alerts and RSS feeds based on their search results; share information, and save important searches;
• Faceted searching – users can finely filter information to fit their research needs, based on CABI's indexing terms and metadata;
• The capability to view full text at the search results level;
• Improved user experience, through a more intuitive interface;
• Suggestions for spelling variations.
The new and improved CAB Direct is fully Shibboleth compliant, will also abstract snippet views at search results level; save searches to social book marking sites and provide COUNTER compliant usage statistics.
Semantico not only contributed design and build to the project, but also user research and testing, and deployment of its new marketing tool, FRagR, a fragment editor that allows easier communication via the platform.
CABI is also pleased to announce the number of full text articles available on CAB Direct, and all other platforms that host CABI's products, has reached 50,000 as part of the total database of c. 8.5m bibliographic records. "This milestone highlights a clear and growing benefit to our subscribers," said Cristina Ashby. "With the substantial number of articles now available, and with a further 10,000 to be added by the end of the year, this collection of material is developing into a body of content that is of considerable importance in its own right."
Andrea Powell, Executive Director, Publishing, of CABI said: "With the release of CAB Direct II, our original decision to choose Semantico as technology partners has been vindicated. They understood our requirements throughout the project and we were delighted with the emphasis placed not only on innovative and appropriate technologies, but also, and importantly for us, on design and usability in order to ensure that we meet the changing demands of the research community with respect to internet resources. Their strong project management and expert advice has helped us to build, test and launch our new product line in good time and we are delighted with the results - and we are confident that our customers will feel the same way".
Richard Padley, Managing Director of Semantico said: “The new CAB Direct platform delivers big gains in usability for researchers with fast searches and a carefully tuned faceted approach to navigating search results. Under the hood the service oriented architecture (SOA) has enabled CABI to re-use the power of our search engine within their wider family of subject specific internet resources sites. The SOA approach delivered fast integration and significant improvements to the functionality of those sites as well as the main CAB Direct platform. CABI are highly experienced and innovative and its been a pleasure to work with them on this project.”
About CAB Direct
CAB Direct is the most thorough and extensive source of information in the applied life sciences, incorporating the leading bibliographic databases CAB Abstracts and Global Health. Over eight million bibliographic records and 50,000 full text applied life sciences articles are hand picked by our team of experts and updated weekly. CAB Direct provides a convenient single point of access to all CABI database subscriptions.
About CABI
CABI is a not-for-profit science-based development and information organization. Its mission and direction are influenced by member countries that help guide the activities undertaken. These include publishing; development projects and research; and microbial services. CABI produces key scientific information, including CAB Abstracts – the world-renowned bibliographic database covering agriculture and the environment. CABI also publishes multimedia compendia, books, e-books and full text internet resources aiming to further science and its application to real life. Our expertise includes animal and veterinary sciences, entomology, plant sciences, environmental sciences, human health, parasitology, mycology, crop protection, rural economics, rural development and leisure and tourism.
About Semantico
Semantico (semantico.com) was formed in 1999 to develop online publishing solutions for the publishing industry. Its mission is to be the partner of choice in helping clients realise the full potential of internet technologies for delivering digital information services. Semantico works to make clients' information ever more discoverable, more useful and more valuable.
Semantico's content delivery tool-sets, subscription management products, and hosting and support services enable rapid and robust, customised solutions for a wide range of clients.
Semantico's management team has a considerable breadth of experience in publishing, e-commerce B2B and B2C online sectors. Its strong engineering background allied with a focus on user-centred design processes ensure that it maintains high standards in its existing and new products, while providing the innovation necessary to compete effectively in emerging online markets.
|
emma_sarling[.]semantico.com 
