The creation of CORDIS was a DG XIII initiative - the Commission decision SEC(88)1831 allowed the service to be first established in 1988.
In 1989 the launch of the VALUE Programme provided a convenient vehicle to carry the development of the budding CORDIS service.
Users could review R&D Programmes, R&D Projects and R&D Publications using the Common Command Language (CCL) on the ECHO (European Commission Host Organisation) server.
In April 1992, the Council decision for more centralised action under the VALUE2 Programme confirmed the need for CORDIS and gave a boost to its development.
The CORDIS databases and web services were fully integrated as the migration into the new Information Dissemination environment (IDS) was completed.
The CORDIS-Focus publication was launched, providing readers with a paper edition of key R&D News articles in three languages - EN, FR & DE.
The first move to cover national R&D information was initiated by Ireland with the start of the EU presidency service.
By the end of 1996, CORDIS had 24,000 registered users eager to browse through 152 000 database records and accessing the web pages some 300,000 times per month.
A pilot project was launched to offer CORDIS as a host for national and regional web services.
It had become clear that CORDIS was no longer a tool reserved for specialists, the spectacular growth in use initiated in 1996 had continued.