INIS: fifty years of evolution

In 1970 the International Nuclear Information System (INIS) was created by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to foster the exchange of scientific and technical information on the peaceful uses of atomic energy. At the time of its inception, INIS had around 4,000 records. Over the years, the number of records has grown to reach nearly 4.5 million today. Approximately 120,000 bibliographic records and 13,000 full-text documents are added each year. 

Among its contributors are 132 IAEA Member States and 11 international organizations. To illustrate the strong growth and evolution of the INIS repository, IAEA published an animation on INIS Scientific Database Evolution over the past 50 years, which shows the results of the global scientific collaboration that underpinned the success of the repository.

The repository offers a global coverage of nuclear literature including nuclear engineering and technology, nuclear safety and radiation protection as well as nuclear applications in life sciences, legal aspects, and environmental and economic aspects of nuclear and non-nuclear energy sources.

INIS also maintains a multilingual thesaurus in Arabic, Chinese, English, French, German, Japanese, Russian and Spanish which provides translations of numerous technical terms to enhance the repository’s ease of use.

The 40th Consultative Meeting of INIS Liaison Officers will take place from 10 to 12 May 2021 and during this event ten countries will present their contributions to the INIS database.