I convert scanned text images to PDF all the time and unless the original used a really odd ball font or was of poor quality, the OCR module in Adobe Acrobat will very accurately convert the image to PDF text that is searchable and can be copied and pasted into Pages/Word/NeoOffice/etc. However any formatting and layout is almost invariably lost in this process.
If we knew what it was we were doing, it wouldn't be called research, would it?
