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Reference Sources and Services

Notes 12.3 International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

The acronym INIS stands for International Nuclear Information System. INIS sponsored by the
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Vienna started functioning in 1970. It is a cooperative,
decentralised computerised abstracting and indexing system providing worldwide coverage of the
literature on the peaceful uses of nuclear energy. It processes and merges input provided by its
members and redistributes the information in machine-readable form as well as in print form. INIS,
the International Nuclear Information System is appropriate for those who need information on the
peaceful applications of nuclear science and technology.

INIS is an international co-operative information system, operated by the International
Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in collaboration with 132 members that include 114
Member States and 19 International Organisations, with over 30 years of experience.
INIS processes most of the world’s scientific and technical literature that falls within its subject
scope. INIS maintains a bibliographic database which presently covers over 2.5 million abstracted
and indexed records and a comprehensive collection of over 600,000 of full-texts of INIS scope
publications which are not easily available through the commercial channels, thus making it the
world’s most comprehensive and leading information source on the peaceful applications of nuclear
science and technology.

Subject Scope
INIS subject coverage has been developed keeping in view the information needs of the international
user community for whom the interests and activities of International Atomic Energy Agency are
relevant especially with regard to peaceful applications of nuclear science and technology.
The chief subject areas are: nuclear reactors, reactor safety, nuclear fusion, applications of radiation
and radioisotopes in medicine, agriculture, industry and pest control. Besides the above some related
fields are nuclear chemistry, nuclear physics and materials science.

Literature Coverage
The literature coverage by the INIS Database includes bibliographic citations and abstracts from
relevant scholarly journal articles, R & D reports, papers presented in seminars and conferences,
books, patents, theses, laws, regulations and standards. Besides these, the INIS inputting centres
located all over the world regularly scan over 2,400 periodicals for articles relevant to the nuclear
science field. An important feature of the INIS is the very fact that most of the abstracts of INIS
records are in English as a carrier language. This is what has made INIS so popular internationally.
Additionally, the INIS Database also contains bibliographic references to various literature types
that include journal articles, books, reports, patents, etc. INIS Database can be accessed by individual
users and institutions in the Member States of INIS and the other cooperating institutions of INIS.

Input Processing
For processing the input to the INIS database, the procedure is as given below:
Literature in each INIS member state collected by a designated national inputting centre that submits
input to the INIS Secretariat in pre-prepared machine-readable form usually through e-mail or on
diskette or magnetic media. The standardised format in which inputs are to be submitted conforms
to the guidelines as provided by the INIS Reference Series.

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