For the first time, peer-reviewed articles on cattle health, science and management published in the American Association of Bovine Practitioners (AABP) Bovine Practitioner publication are available free online to veterinarians, students, researchers and the public.

Through a 2017 partnership with the Texas A&M University Medical Services Library, the Bovine Practitioner issues were scanned and digitized to provide high-quality searchable scans, AABP said.

“This is an historic moment for AABP,” said AABP publications editor Dr. Robert Smith. “More than 50 years of Bovine Practitioner articles — every one of them from the first through the most current issue — are now available in a search-friendly format.”

AABP said the scans are searchable to keyword and indexed by article and will be searchable on search engines such as Google Scholar.

“The Bovine Practitioner is now an open-access journal, expanding the reach of the journal and increasing impact for authors,” Smith added. “This is especially important for authors who are university faculty members.”

AABP executive director Dr. Fred Gingrich II noted that AABP “hopes that this increases the impact factor of AABP publications by increasing citations to the peer-reviewed research supported by AABP. The AABP board of directors hopes that by increasing the impact factor or the Bovine Practitioner, we can increase the number of submissions to our journal.”

Gingrich added that having access to these digitized scans is also a benefit to AABP members to have instant access in an easily navigable online platform for all Bovine Practitioner issues.

The Bovine Practitioner can be found at this website. Users need to register on the site to view and search the articles.

AABP said upcoming plans include adding the AABP Annual Conference and AABP Recent Veterinary Graduate Conference proceedings on a similar platform.

AABP is a membership-based, not-for-profit organization serving cattle veterinary medicine professionals across the U.S., Canada and other countries.