IFIS is an academic publishing company and

not-for-profit organisation A not-for-profit or non-for-profit organization (NFPO) is a legal entity that does not distribute surplus funds to its members and is formed to fulfill specific objectives. While not-for-profit organizations and non-profit organizations (NPO ...

operating in the sciences of food and health. Based in

Reading Reading is the process of taking in the sense or meaning of symbols, often specifically those of a written language, by means of Visual perception, sight or Somatosensory system, touch. For educators and researchers, reading is a multifacete ...

, IFIS produces the online bibliographic database, FSTA, a resource which the company has offered since 1969. FSTA (Food Science and Technology Abstracts) includes over 2 million scientific non-predatory records from trusted sources, all related to disciplines surrounding food and beverages. As a not-for-profit organisation and educational charity, IFIS: * offers access to researchers in developing countries through the

Research4Life Research4Life is a platform and website dedicated to making peer-reviewed knowledge public to students and researchers in lower income countries. Research4Life provides free or low cost access to academic and professional peer-reviewed content onli ...

programmes,

HINARI Hinari Access to Research for Health Programme was set up by the World Health Organization and major publishers to enable developing countries to access collections of biomedical and health literature. There are up to 15,000 e-journals and up to ...

ARDI ARDI is the Access to Research for Development and Innovation program, a partnership between the World Intellectual Property Organization and major scientific and technical publishers. ARDI provides access to nearly 10,000 online journals, books and ...

, OARE and

AGORA The agora (; , romanized: ', meaning "market" in Modern Greek) was a central public space in ancient Ancient Greece, Greek polis, city-states. The literal meaning of the word "agora" is "gathering place" or "assembly". The agora was the center ...

. * provides training and develops educational resources for the food community; for example, a best practice guide for literature searching and online learning module for how to research effectively. IFIS work with a global network of regulatory experts in their Meet the Partners tool, and they produce Escalex Limits News and Alerts, a curated news and alerts service for legal developments in food. IFIS also produces, in association with

Wiley Blackwell Wiley-Blackwell is an international scientific, technical, medical, and scholarly publishing business of John Wiley & Sons. It was formed by the merger of John Wiley & Sons Global Scientific, Technical, and Medical business with Blackwell Publish ...

, the Dictionary of Food Science & Technology, now in its second edition.

History

Originally known as the International Food Information Service, IFIS was established in 1968 by the collaboration of four organisations: *

Institute of Food Technologists The Institute of Food Technologists (IFT) is an international, non-profit scientific society of professionals engaged in food science, food technology, and related areas in academia, government and industry. It has more than 17,000 members from ...

(IFT), USA * The Centre for Biosciences and Agriculture International (CABI), UK * Deutsche Landwirtschafts-Gesellschaft e.V (DLG), Germany * The Centrum voor Landbouw Publikaties en Landbouwdocumemtatie (PUDOC), the Netherlands The company was originally based at Lane End House in

Shinfield Shinfield is a village and civil parish in the Borough of Wokingham, Berkshire, England. It lies just south of Reading, around from the town centre, and covers an area of . Shinfield Park is the northern part of the parish, becoming physical ...

, and moved to The Granary on Bridge Farm in

Arborfield Arborfield is a village and former civil parish, now in the parish of Arborfield and Newland, in the Borough of Wokingham in Berkshire, England. It is about south-east of Reading, about west of Wokingham. It lies about west of the village o ...

. Having moved in June 2020, they are now based in Winnersh Triangle, Berkshire, UK.

FSTA – Food Science and Technology Abstracts

FSTA is a bibliographic

abstracting An abstract is a brief summary of a research article, thesis, review, academic conference, conference proceedings, proceeding, or any in-depth analysis of a particular subject and is often used to help the reader quickly ascertain the paper's purpo ...

and indexing (A&I) database for scientific and technological information relating to food, beverages, and nutrition. It contains over 1.5 million indexed records, with full-text links where available, covering over 5,475 active and historical journals, books, trade publications, reviews, conference proceedings, reports, patents, and standards. The database is updated weekly with all records indexed against IFIS' thesaurus, containing over 13,000 food science keywords, curated and structured into hierarchies. The resource is used by researchers, industry practitioners, and students, and it contains information sources in 29 languages, sourced from publishers in over 60 countries. Coverage includes all major commodities in the food and beverage industry, related applied and pure sciences,

pet food Pet food is animal feed intended for consumption by pets. Typically sold in pet stores and supermarkets, it is usually specific to the type of animal, such as dog food or cat food. Most meat used for animals is a byproduct of the human food indus ...

s, food psychology, food economics,

food safety Food safety (or food hygiene) is used as a scientific method/discipline describing handling, food processing, preparation, and food storage, storage of food in ways that prevent foodborne illness. The occurrence of two or more cases of a simi ...

, and more. FSTA can be accessed through

EBSCOhost EBSCO Information Services, headquartered in Ipswich, Massachusetts, is a division of EBSCO Industries Inc., a private company headquartered in Birmingham, Alabama. EBSCO provides products and services to libraries of many types around the worl ...

Ovid Publius Ovidius Naso (; 20 March 43 BC – AD 17/18), known in English as Ovid ( ), was a Augustan literature (ancient Rome), Roman poet who lived during the reign of Augustus. He was a younger contemporary of Virgil and Horace, with whom he i ...

Proquest ProQuest LLC is an Ann Arbor, Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan-based global information-content and technology company, founded in 1938 as University Microfilms by Eugene Power. ProQuest is known for its applications and information services for l ...

Dialog, STN and

Web of Science The Web of Science (WoS; previously known as Web of Knowledge) is a paid-access platform that provides (typically via the internet) access to multiple databases that provide reference and citation data from academic journals, conference proceedi ...

. Launched in February 2022, was the FSTA database - with new full-text capability. FSTA with Full Text is produced in collaboration with EBSCO and is available exclusively on the EBSCO platform. Allowing users to quickly discover authoritative, food-focused research. Topics include:: *Biotechnology *Food safety *

Omics Omics is the collective characterization and quantification of entire sets of biological molecules and the investigation of how they translate into the structure, function, and dynamics of an organism or group of organisms. The branches of scien ...

technologies *Pet foods *Sport science *Sustainability

References

{{authority control Academic publishing Database companies Food science institutes Food technology organizations Publishing companies of England