Isako joins Cairn.info

“Cairn.info has been a long-standing partner of Isako, whose dynamism and commitment to quality have driven our own development. We are very excited about this merger, which will allow Isako to expand its services for publishers, libraries, and archives,” affirmed Vayness and Frédéric Pierrat, co-founder anf fomer technical director of Isako, who now acts as operations manager.

“For over 20 years, we have witnessed the Isako team’s technological expertise and service-oriented mindset first-hand,” stated Jean-Baptiste de Vathaire, co-founder of Cairn.info. “Current advances in artificial intelligence mean the cost and quality of digital processing increasingly depend on the optimal integration of these technologies. Our project with Isako, who have consistently prioritized R&D over the years, aligns perfectly with this approach.”

In the words of Thomas Parisot, Cairn.info’s co-director: “This merger guarantees enhanced performance and innovation in Cairn.info’s services for users, partner publishers, and libraries. Alongside our accelerated growth, particularly in the Francophone world, we are seeing increasing demand for the efficient organization and management of large corpora of publications.”

Founded in 2002, Isako develops technology for semantic analysis, automatic language processing, and intelligent content extraction, offering conversion into various rich formats: structured Word, EPUB, XML, HTML, Web PDF and IAD, ALTO, METS, etc.

An acquisition supporting Cairn.info’s development strategy

The majority of functionalities offered on the Cairn.info portal pertain to publications in HTML format. However, PDF versions of titles (with pagination) account for 30% of the highest quality interactions with our content[SLB1] —those carried out within the 2,000-plus subscribed institutions in 70 countries. The PDF format also conveys the publication’s editorial identity. Enriching this version, making it secure, and linking it more closely to the online version are part of our long-term user retention strategy. Speech synthesis, digital accessibility, and multi-format indexing also offer significant development potential.

Technological synergies for publishers and libraries

Since their inception, Cairn.info and Isako have both served the same partners: publishers and libraries. Through this new partnership, Isako’s products and services will gain visibility thanks to Cairn.info’s strong position in the humanities and social sciences, as well as in the formal sciences, technology, medicine, and law. With our sector facing increasing challenges, such as the systematization of digital access to published works, and the development of artificial intelligence, this alliance will meet the growing need for rich and highly structured corpora.