Following recent discussions, EUCARPIA and CAB International announce a partnership from January 2005 to make available the full text of conference papers worldwide to users of the CAB ABSTRACTS database. Links between CABI and EUCARPIA are longstanding and recently EUCARPIA offered a CABI journal Plant Genetic Resources: Characterization and Utilization to its members at a reduced subscription.

CABI Publishing, the publishing arm of the non-profit organization CAB International, with its mission to support agriculture in Developing countries, has had a great deal of feedback in recent years from database users concerning the link to the full text of original papers. There is an increasing expectation amongst users of bibliographic databases that they should be able to link to full text after they have seen the abstract. The CAB ABSTRACTS database is valued by researchers and librarians because it covers such a wide range of published material including conference proceedings, books and reports. However, many of these documents are difficult for the researchers and librarians to locate. Although many reports and conference proceeding are now being published on the Internet, links to these are often changed or broken and when internet sites are redesigned older documents are often discarded.

In response to this demand from the users of CAB ABSTRACTS, CABI Publishing are proposing to create a repository of full text material where documents can be located by searching the CAB ABSTRACTS database. By including documents in the repository their preservation is assured and they can be easily found, so that the information and knowledge contained in them is available to scientists and professionals throughout the world. EUCARPIA President, Dr Jaime Prohens Tomás, in supporting the initiative, commented "[this] proposal is very interesting for giving diffusion to EUCARPIA events and increase their impact on the scientific community".

As copyright of EUCARPIA conference and workshop proceedings rests with editors, and not with EUCARPIA itself, the editors of future proceedings are urged to consider granting CABI Publishing internet publishing rights. CABI Publishing does not require exclusive publishing rights (the document may also be made available through other Internet sites), and copyright would be retained by the original publisher.

As a start, agreement has been made with editors of the proceeding of the 2004 EUCARPIA Congress, held in Tulln, Austria, and the entire full text of the papers will be made available online via the CAB ABSTRACTS database early 2006. Bibliographic records of papers presented at this meeting are already available on the database

For more information about the project, please contact Dr. Halina Dawson (h.dawson@cabi.org) at CABI Publishing, Nosworthy Way, Wallingford, Oxfordshire, OX10 8DE, UK (phone +44 1491 829423).