The INCOCOA Virtual Library

Improving information sharing within the cocoa research community

The INCOCOA Virtual Library initiative sets out to improve access to relevant literature for the cocoa research community. Good communication and awareness of current and previous research activities are important in reducing unintentional duplication or repetition of previous research and in promoting collaborative activities to the ultimate benefit of the cocoa sector. Access to scientific publications via the internet is of great benefit to the research community and many publications can be obtained via publishers' websites, abstracting services, online libraries and academic networking platforms such as ResearchGate and Academia. However, there is also a wealth of "grey literature", such as institutional reports and bulletins, newsletters, conference and meeting reports, which is either unpublished or has been published in a non-commercial form and is often more difficult to find. The INCOCOA Virtual Library initiative sets out to improve access to this literature through links to existing bibliographic resources and by encouraging the cocoa community to contribute new resources.

Access to Material

The library provides direct access to material published by the INCOCOA groups and allows users to search an extensive bibliographic database of over 20,000 references. Depending on the source and copyright restrictions, access may be provided to a digital version of the paper or to a link to an online source. We are building up a collection of scanned materials and the INCOCOA secretariat will try to help researchers source a copy of the material where we can.

Keywords

A set of keywords is being developed in order to facilitate access to the information. This is especially important where there have been changes to the taxonomy of organisms, institute names and acronyms over the years. For example, the addition of a Keyword "Witches' Broom" may help locate matching references, whether the organism is referred to as Marasmius perniciosa, Crinipellis perniciosa or Moniliophthora perniciosa in the publication itself. Keywords are being added to facilitate searching by country, institute, and subject (see the User Guide). Input into this process of ensuring that the most appropriate keywords are being used is welcomed (please Contact Us to get involved).

Acknowledgements

We are indebted to all those individuals and organisations who are contributing to this initiative (view details here). The development of the INCOCOA website and virtual library, as well as the ICGD project, is supported by CRA Ltd, a non-profit scientific research association supported by contributions from Mars, Mondelez International and ICE Futures Europe.

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