International Nuclear Information System (INIS) — 50 Years of Successful Contribution to Nuclear Science and Society
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Transcript: English(auto-generated)
00:00
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
00:22
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.
00:43
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?
01:01
Let's look at the first question. What is INIS? In short, it could be defined as an online, open, and free 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.
01:24
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.
01:41
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.
02:04
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 Governance in 1969 to further the IAEA's
02:23
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.
02:41
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.
03:02
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.
03:25
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 microfiche. Afterwards, INIS staff would check the incoming information, combine it into a single computer-readable
03:46
file, and distribute it to member states as machine-readable tapes and semi-monthly abstracting journals. Needless to say that today, no mailing and microfilming is done since it is a very electronically operated system.
04:04
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.
04:22
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.
04:48
To assist with capacity building and training. And finally, to provide information services and support to member states and the IAEA.
05:03
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 text of nuclear literature published in the IAEA member states.
05:30
The second one is information preservation. Electronically preserve non-conventional or grey literature such as IAEA documents, policy, and
05:40
technical reports out of full text published from member states and international organizations. Information sharing makes the INIS collection freely accessible to all internet users around the world. Nuclear knowledge organization, to create thesaurus as a major tool for describing nuclear information and knowledge in structured form.
06:06
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.
06:22
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.
06:45
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
07:04
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.
07:27
That is the most valuable part, in fact, of the INIS collection. Target audience includes researchers, students, government officials, journalists, general public, and others.
07:41
It is found that INIS repository also represents an excellent tool for preservation of the world nuclear information and, as such, it was used 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.
08:07
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.
08:24
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, a challenge within the organization we belong to and we belong to, which can sometimes hardly realize that there is still a need for financing
08:45
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.
09:00
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 IAEA's budget as well.
09:27
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
09:45
make them available to INIS as well as available funds for maintaining collection by the INIS Secretariat. Final challenges are technological changes which are unprecedented, unpredictable, fast and usually very expensive. Digital transformation, which is upon all of us, requires substantial hardware and software updates, change of established
10:08
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 a possible opportunity which comes with it.
10:24
Largest opportunity for INIS rests 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 access to 2 million full text is an amazing asset
10:41
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. There are just this year over 1.6 million unique users that visited INIS and performed
11:04
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.
11:22
Well-designed and developed in Stasaurus with over 31,000 terms offers another opportunity for transforming it into 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
11:44
this 50th anniversary while looking at even greater success in years to come. And for the end, let's remember words from philosopher Picurus, the 4th century BC, that there is nothing permanent except change. Thank you.
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