International Nuclear Information System (INIS) — 50 Years of Successful Contribution to Nuclear Science and Society
Savic, Dobrica
The onset of the cold war in 1947 ushered in an era of fear and uncertainty in nuclear technology. The Atoms for Peace speech delivered by President Dwight D. Eisenhower to the UN General Assembly in 1953 spurred on the founding of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in 1957. The IAEA's statutes recognized the need to "…foster the exchange of scientific and technical information on peaceful uses of atomic energy". Thus, with the IAEA Board of Governors approval in 1969, INIS was established in May 1970, fifty years ago, as a mechanism to provide access to a comprehensive collection of references to the world's nuclear literature. INIS has grown from a modest 25 members to a unique global information resource with more than 150 members. It maintains a repository of over 4.3 million bibliographic records, of which 1.6 million are full-text. Each year, more than one million visitors make 1.9 million searches, viewing 3.2 million web pages. This paper discusses ways INIS operates, the role of its members, the importance of international cooperation, contribution to nuclear science, information sharing goals, and the benefits society has from open access to nuclear information.
 Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen. It gives me great pleasure to have this opportunity today and present to you something that is very close to my heart, the International Nuclear Information System, also known as INIS. This year marks 50th anniversary of INIS, 50 years of successful contribution to nuclear science and society. For the last 12 years I had the privilege to work for this amazing system. Ten minutes assigned to this presentation are too short to squeeze 50 years of hard work and great results achieved, but I will concentrate on answers to five main questions. First, what is INIS? Second, when was it established? Third, why was INIS established? Fourth, how does it function? And the fifth one, what is INIS today? Let's look at the first question. What is INIS? In short, it could be defined as an online, open and three repository of nuclear information. It is part of the International Atomic Energy Agency, also known as IAEA, which is part of the United Nations and based in Vienna, Austria. It is one of the world's largest custodians of non-conventional published literature in the field of nuclear science and technology. INIS operates on a special membership arrangement that sets specific duties and privileges for its members. Current membership is 132 countries and 24 international organizations. It can be also defined as a collaborative effort, which means decentralized input, centralized storage and centralized dissemination. Now that we know what INIS is, let's briefly look at its very beginning. In other words, let's go back 50 years into history and the midst of Cold War, which was one of the reasons for establishing this rare channel of communication between two divided blocks. INIS was approved by the IAEA Board of Governors in 1969 to further the IAEA's mandate to foster the exchange of scientific and technical information on peaceful uses of atomic energy. At the beginning, INIS comprised 25 IAEA member states, while today, as already mentioned, INIS has 156 members. At the very beginning, at its inception in 1970, only 3950 records were entered to the database. Today, around 100,000 records are added annually. The highest ever number of annual input was over 130,000. It is worth mentioning that never before had such a geographically and linguistically diverse group of nations cooperated to offer free, easy to find and trusted information from a central repository to scientists, researchers, information specialists, students, government officials and others. Initially, the inputting process was tedious and required a lot of manpower. Member states would mail paper documents to the IAEA where they would be photographed and converted to micro fish. Afterwards, INIS staff would check the incoming information, combine it into a single computer readable file and distribute it to member states as a machine readable, tapes and semi-monthly abstracting journals. Needless to say that today, no mailing and microfilming is done since its very electronically operated system. I would also like to mention that during the initial COVID-19 pandemic, INIS easily moved to remote work and even increased its input. There are several reasons and goals for establishing INIS and the same goals are still valuable today. They include to foster the exchange of scientific and technical information on the peaceful use of nuclear science and technology, to collect, process, preserve and disseminate collected information, to increase awareness in member states of the importance of maintaining efficient and effective systems for managing nuclear information resources, to assist with capacity building and training and finally to provide information services and support to member states and the IAEA. What is the modus operandi of INIS? Let's look at the major ones. The first function is information collection and probably that is one of the most important ones. So there INIS collects and processes bibliographic metadata as well as full texts of nuclear literature published in the IAEA member states. The second one is information preservation. Electronically preserved non-conventional or gray literature such as IAEA documents policy and technical reports, other full texts published from member states and international organizations. Information sharing make the INIS collection freely accessible to all internet users around the world. Nuclear knowledge organization to create Tessaurus as a major tool for describing nuclear information and knowledge in structured form. And finally capacity building, a very important function especially for our member states. It is to take actions that improve effectiveness of INIS member states in nuclear information management. 50 years of development and diligent information work has passed. So let's look at INIS today. Today INIS repository has a well-defined nuclear subject coverage which includes 50 related categories. However most of the records are coming from 15 subject areas. It is also a large and well-maintained collection. Its dynamic growth is not only in a number of newly added records but also in many technological changes introduced over the years. Some of those changes include use of automated classification, use of artificial intelligence and machine learning, harvesting and many many others. INIS is fully open and free repository available to all. It can be reached from every corner of the world. Probably one of the best and most used features of INIS repository is its collection of full text documents. That is the most valuable part in fact of the INIS collection. Target audience includes researchers, students, government officials, journalists, general public and others. It is found that INIS repository also represents an excellent tool for preservation of the world nuclear information and as such it was used a few times to restore original collections in some member states that lost their initial collections. Finally instead of a conclusion let's examine some of the challenges that INIS is facing as well as some of the advantages and opportunities. Let's start with challenges. The largest challenge comes from Google and Google scholar. The Google challenge is twofold. Firstly it is the outside challenge seen through a number of users directly to INIS repository to search for information and documents they need. It is generally assumed that one can find everything using Google search engine and that there is nothing else there worth spending time finding and using it. Secondly it's the inside challenge. Challenge within the organization we belong to and we belong to which can sometimes hardly realize that there is still a need for financing internal information management operation because it might seem that everything is already available somewhere else. INIS has a very good cooperation with Google since we managed to have all of our documents indexed by Google scholar and made available through their search. Still it should not be forgotten that it is thanks to INIS and its 50 years of work on collecting the information that is now widely available and easily accessible. Important message here is that someone needs to prepare and put documents online in order for those search engines to find them. Second challenge comes from the world economic situation which impacts our member states and the IEA's budget as well. Although almost everyone talks and praises information and its importance in case of budget cuts, information management becomes somehow the most suitable target. That negatively impacts readiness of member states to work on collecting their national information resources and make them available to INIS as well as available funds for maintaining collection by the INIS secretariat. Final challenge are technological changes which are unprecedented, unpredictable, fast and unusually very expensive. Digital transformation which is upon all of us requires substantial hardware and software updates, change of established work procedures and methodologies, needs a workforce with different skills which implies substantial training and retraining efforts. Whenever we encounter some challenge we should look also at the possible opportunity which comes with it. Largest opportunity for INIS rest with its members who have trust in this joint venture proven through 50 years and millions of records and users. Large collection of 4.4 million bibliographic records and 2 million full tax is an amazing asset which needs to be maintained but could be reused, repackaged and repurposed in many ways offering new possibilities and opportunities. Popularity that INIS repository has with its user base is also a great asset and opportunity. They are just this year over 1.6 million unique users that visited INIS and performed 2.2 million searches, opened 3.6 million pages and downloaded almost 200,000 documents this year. This relationship with the user base needs to be nourished through offerings of high quality relevant reliable and trustworthy information. Well designed and developed in its tazours with over 31,000 terms offers another opportunity for transforming it into a modern taxonomies and ontologies which are regarded as main building blocks for semantic applications and use of artificial intelligence. It is with high hopes and expectations that the INIS secretariat is celebrating this 50th anniversary while looking at even greater success in years to come. And for the end let's remember words from philosopher Pickers the 4th century BC that there is nothing permanent except change. Thank you.
 Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen. It gives me great pleasure to have this  opportunity today and present to you something that is very close to my heart,  the International Nuclear Information System, also known as INIS. This year marks  50th anniversary of INIS, 50 years of successful contribution to nuclear  science and society. For the last 12 years I had the privilege to work for  this amazing system. Ten minutes assigned to this presentation are too short to  squeeze 50 years of hard work and great results achieved, but I will  concentrate on answers to five main questions. First, what is INIS? Second,  when was it established? Third, why was INIS established? Fourth, how does it  function? And the fifth one, what is INIS today?  Let's look at the first question. What is INIS? In short, it could be defined as an  online, open and three repository of nuclear information. It is part of the  International Atomic Energy Agency, also known as IAEA, which is part of the  United Nations and based in Vienna, Austria. It is one of the world's largest  custodians of non-conventional published literature in the field of nuclear  science and technology. INIS operates on a special membership arrangement that sets  specific duties and privileges for its members. Current membership is 132  countries and 24 international organizations. It can be also defined as  a collaborative effort, which means decentralized input, centralized storage  and centralized dissemination. Now that we know what INIS is, let's briefly look  at its very beginning. In other words, let's go back 50 years into history and  the midst of Cold War, which was one of the reasons for establishing this rare  channel of communication between two divided blocks. INIS was approved by the  IAEA Board of Governors in 1969 to further the IAEA's mandate to foster the  exchange of scientific and technical information on peaceful uses of atomic  energy. At the beginning, INIS comprised 25 IAEA member states, while today, as  already mentioned, INIS has 156 members. At the very beginning, at its inception  in 1970, only 3950 records were entered to the database. Today, around 100,000  records are added annually. The highest ever number of annual input was over  130,000. It is worth mentioning that never before had such a geographically and  linguistically diverse group of nations cooperated to offer free, easy to find  and trusted information from a central repository to scientists, researchers,  information specialists, students, government officials and others.  Initially, the inputting process was tedious and required a lot of manpower.  Member states would mail paper documents to the IAEA where they would be photographed  and converted to micro fish. Afterwards, INIS staff would check the incoming  information, combine it into a single computer readable file and distribute it  to member states as a machine readable, tapes and semi-monthly abstracting  journals. Needless to say that today, no mailing and microfilming is done since  its very electronically operated system. I would also like to mention that during  the initial COVID-19 pandemic, INIS easily moved to remote work and even  increased its input. There are several reasons and goals for establishing INIS  and the same goals are still valuable today. They include to foster the exchange  of scientific and technical information on the peaceful use of nuclear science  and technology, to collect, process, preserve and disseminate collected  information, to increase awareness in member states of the importance of  maintaining efficient and effective systems for managing nuclear information  resources, to assist with capacity building and training and finally to  provide information services and support to member states and the IAEA.  What is the modus operandi of INIS? Let's look at the major ones. The first  function is information collection and probably that is one of the most  important ones. So there INIS collects and processes bibliographic metadata as  well as full texts of nuclear literature published in the IAEA member states.  The second one is information preservation. Electronically preserved  non-conventional or gray literature such as IAEA documents policy and technical  reports, other full texts published from member states and international  organizations. Information sharing make the INIS collection freely accessible to  all internet users around the world. Nuclear knowledge organization to create  Tessaurus as a major tool for describing nuclear information and knowledge  in structured form. And finally capacity building, a very important function  especially for our member states. It is to take actions that improve  effectiveness of INIS member states in nuclear information management. 50 years  of development and diligent information work has passed. So let's look at INIS  today. Today INIS repository has a well-defined nuclear subject coverage  which includes 50 related categories. However most of the records are coming  from 15 subject areas. It is also a large and well-maintained collection. Its  dynamic growth is not only in a number of newly added records but also in many  technological changes introduced over the years. Some of those changes include use  of automated classification, use of artificial intelligence and machine  learning, harvesting and many many others. INIS is fully open and free  repository available to all. It can be reached from every corner of the world.  Probably one of the best and most used features of INIS repository is its  collection of full text documents. That is the most valuable part in fact of the  INIS collection. Target audience includes researchers, students, government  officials, journalists, general public and others. It is found that INIS  repository also represents an excellent tool for preservation of the world  nuclear information and as such it was used a few times to restore original  collections in some member states that lost their initial collections. Finally  instead of a conclusion let's examine some of the challenges that INIS is  facing as well as some of the advantages and opportunities. Let's start with  challenges. The largest challenge comes from Google and Google scholar. The  Google challenge is twofold. Firstly it is the outside challenge seen through a  number of users directly to INIS repository to search for information and  documents they need. It is generally assumed that one can find everything  using Google search engine and that there is nothing else there worth spending  time finding and using it. Secondly it's the inside challenge. Challenge within  the organization we belong to and we belong to which can sometimes hardly  realize that there is still a need for financing internal information management  operation because it might seem that everything is already available somewhere  else. INIS has a very good cooperation with Google since we managed to have all  of our documents indexed by Google scholar and made available through their  search. Still it should not be forgotten that it is thanks to INIS and its 50  years of work on collecting the information that is now widely available  and easily accessible. Important message here is that someone needs to prepare  and put documents online in order for those search engines to find them.  Second challenge comes from the world economic situation which impacts our  member states and the IEA's budget as well. Although almost everyone talks and  praises information and its importance in case of budget cuts, information  management becomes somehow the most suitable target. That negatively impacts  readiness of member states to work on collecting their national information  resources and make them available to INIS as well as available funds for  maintaining collection by the INIS secretariat. Final challenge are  technological changes which are unprecedented, unpredictable, fast and  unusually very expensive. Digital transformation which is upon all of us  requires substantial hardware and software updates, change of established  work procedures and methodologies, needs a workforce with different skills which  implies substantial training and retraining efforts. Whenever we encounter  some challenge we should look also at the possible opportunity which comes with  it. Largest opportunity for INIS rest with its members who have trust in this  joint venture proven through 50 years and millions of records and users. Large  collection of 4.4 million bibliographic records and 2 million full  tax is an amazing asset which needs to be maintained but could be reused,  repackaged and repurposed in many ways offering new possibilities and  opportunities. Popularity that INIS repository has with its user base is  also a great asset and opportunity. They are just this year over 1.6 million  unique users that visited INIS and performed 2.2 million searches, opened  3.6 million pages and downloaded almost 200,000 documents this year. This  relationship with the user base needs to be nourished through offerings of high  quality relevant reliable and trustworthy information. Well designed and  developed in its tazours with over 31,000 terms offers another opportunity for  transforming it into a modern taxonomies and ontologies which are regarded as  main building blocks for semantic applications and use of artificial  intelligence. It is with high hopes and expectations that the INIS secretariat  is celebrating this 50th anniversary while looking at even greater success in  years to come. And for the end let's remember words from philosopher Pickers  the 4th century BC that there is nothing permanent except change. Thank you.
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Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen. It gives me great pleasure to have this opportunity today and present to you something that is very close to my heart, the International Nuclear Information System, also known as INIS. This year marks 50th anniversary of INIS, 50 years of successful contribution to nuclear science and society. For the last 12 years I had the privilege to work for this amazing system. Ten minutes assigned to this presentation are too short to squeeze 50 years of hard work and great results achieved, but I will concentrate on answers to five main questions. First, what is INIS? Second, when was it established? Third, why was INIS established? Fourth, how does it function? And the fifth one, what is INIS today? Let's look at the first question. What is INIS? In short, it could be defined as an online, open and three repository of nuclear information. It is part of the International Atomic Energy Agency, also known as IAEA, which is part of the United Nations and based in Vienna, Austria. It is one of the world's largest custodians of non-conventional published literature in the field of nuclear science and technology. INIS operates on a special membership arrangement that sets specific duties and privileges for its members. Current membership is 132 countries and 24 international organizations. It can be also defined as a collaborative effort, which means decentralized input, centralized storage and centralized dissemination. Now that we know what INIS is, let's briefly look at its very beginning. In other words, let's go back 50 years into history and the midst of Cold War, which was one of the reasons for establishing this rare channel of communication between two divided blocks. INIS was approved by the IAEA Board of Governors in 1969 to further the IAEA's mandate to foster the exchange of scientific and technical information on peaceful uses of atomic energy. At the beginning, INIS comprised 25 IAEA member states, while today, as already mentioned, INIS has 156 members. At the very beginning, at its inception in 1970, only 3950 records were entered to the database. Today, around 100,000 records are added annually. The highest ever number of annual input was over 130,000. It is worth mentioning that never before had such a geographically and linguistically diverse group of nations cooperated to offer free, easy to find and trusted information from a central repository to scientists, researchers, information specialists, students, government officials and others. Initially, the inputting process was tedious and required a lot of manpower. Member states would mail paper documents to the IAEA where they would be photographed and converted to micro fish. Afterwards, INIS staff would check the incoming information, combine it into a single computer readable file and distribute it to member states as a machine readable, tapes and semi-monthly abstracting journals. Needless to say that today, no mailing and microfilming is done since its very electronically operated system. I would also like to mention that during the initial COVID-19 pandemic, INIS easily moved to remote work and even increased its input. There are several reasons and goals for establishing INIS and the same goals are still valuable today. They include to foster the exchange of scientific and technical information on the peaceful use of nuclear science and technology, to collect, process, preserve and disseminate collected information, to increase awareness in member states of the importance of maintaining efficient and effective systems for managing nuclear information resources, to assist with capacity building and training and finally to provide information services and support to member states and the IAEA. What is the modus operandi of INIS? Let's look at the major ones. The first function is information collection and probably that is one of the most important ones. So there INIS collects and processes bibliographic metadata as well as full texts of nuclear literature published in the IAEA member states. The second one is information preservation. Electronically preserved non-conventional or gray literature such as IAEA documents policy and technical reports, other full texts published from member states and international organizations. Information sharing make the INIS collection freely accessible to all internet users around the world. Nuclear knowledge organization to create Tessaurus as a major tool for describing nuclear information and knowledge in structured form. And finally capacity building, a very important function especially for our member states. It is to take actions that improve effectiveness of INIS member states in nuclear information management. 50 years of development and diligent information work has passed. So let's look at INIS today. Today INIS repository has a well-defined nuclear subject coverage which includes 50 related categories. However most of the records are coming from 15 subject areas. It is also a large and well-maintained collection. Its dynamic growth is not only in a number of newly added records but also in many technological changes introduced over the years. Some of those changes include use of automated classification, use of artificial intelligence and machine learning, harvesting and many many others. INIS is fully open and free repository available to all. It can be reached from every corner of the world. Probably one of the best and most used features of INIS repository is its collection of full text documents. That is the most valuable part in fact of the INIS collection. Target audience includes researchers, students, government officials, journalists, general public and others. It is found that INIS repository also represents an excellent tool for preservation of the world nuclear information and as such it was used a few times to restore original collections in some member states that lost their initial collections. Finally instead of a conclusion let's examine some of the challenges that INIS is facing as well as some of the advantages and opportunities. Let's start with challenges. The largest challenge comes from Google and Google scholar. The Google challenge is twofold. Firstly it is the outside challenge seen through a number of users directly to INIS repository to search for information and documents they need. It is generally assumed that one can find everything using Google search engine and that there is nothing else there worth spending time finding and using it. Secondly it's the inside challenge. Challenge within the organization we belong to and we belong to which can sometimes hardly realize that there is still a need for financing internal information management operation because it might seem that everything is already available somewhere else. INIS has a very good cooperation with Google since we managed to have all of our documents indexed by Google scholar and made available through their search. Still it should not be forgotten that it is thanks to INIS and its 50 years of work on collecting the information that is now widely available and easily accessible. Important message here is that someone needs to prepare and put documents online in order for those search engines to find them. Second challenge comes from the world economic situation which impacts our member states and the IEA's budget as well. Although almost everyone talks and praises information and its importance in case of budget cuts, information management becomes somehow the most suitable target. That negatively impacts readiness of member states to work on collecting their national information resources and make them available to INIS as well as available funds for maintaining collection by the INIS secretariat. Final challenge are technological changes which are unprecedented, unpredictable, fast and unusually very expensive. Digital transformation which is upon all of us requires substantial hardware and software updates, change of established work procedures and methodologies, needs a workforce with different skills which implies substantial training and retraining efforts. Whenever we encounter some challenge we should look also at the possible opportunity which comes with it. Largest opportunity for INIS rest with its members who have trust in this joint venture proven through 50 years and millions of records and users. Large collection of 4.4 million bibliographic records and 2 million full tax is an amazing asset which needs to be maintained but could be reused, repackaged and repurposed in many ways offering new possibilities and opportunities. Popularity that INIS repository has with its user base is also a great asset and opportunity. They are just this year over 1.6 million unique users that visited INIS and performed 2.2 million searches, opened 3.6 million pages and downloaded almost 200,000 documents this year. This relationship with the user base needs to be nourished through offerings of high quality relevant reliable and trustworthy information. Well designed and developed in its tazours with over 31,000 terms offers another opportunity for transforming it into a modern taxonomies and ontologies which are regarded as main building blocks for semantic applications and use of artificial intelligence. It is with high hopes and expectations that the INIS secretariat is celebrating this 50th anniversary while looking at even greater success in years to come. And for the end let's remember words from philosopher Pickers the 4th century BC that there is nothing permanent except change. Thank you.
contribution to nuclear science and society. For defined as an online, open and three repository of nuclear information. It is part of the International Atomic Energy Agency, also known as science and technology. INIS operates on a duties and privileges for its members. Current and the midst of Cold War, which was one of the was approved by the IAEA Board of Governors in 1969 to further the IAEA's mandate to foster the exchange of scientific and technical information on peaceful uses of atomic energy. At the trusted information from a central repository to to foster the exchange of scientific and technical information on the peaceful use of states of the importance of maintaining efficient building and training and finally to provide well as full texts of nuclear literature states and international organizations. Information sharing make the INIS collection INIS has a very good cooperation with Google bibliographic records and 2 million full tax is opportunity. They are just this year over 1.6 documents this year. This relationship with the