International nuclear information system (INIS) at ANSTO

Full text: INIS is the world-leading information system in the field of nuclear science and technology. It is operated by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in collaboration with 103 Member States and 19 international organisations. It contains over 2 million bibliographic references (1970-present) and a unique collection of scientific and technical reports, conference papers, dissertations, patents and others documents, known as the grey literature. ANSTO hosts the Australian INIS Centre, which is responsible for the collection and processing of the Australian material for inclusion in the database as well as dissemination of INIS output products in Australia. Through its participation in INIS Australia gains access to the result of billions of dollars of nuclear-related R and D from around the world, and promote nuclear scientific and technical developments in Australia to the international science community. A particular case is presented, which illustrates how INIS could be used to evaluate the research effort in nuclear science and technology. Citation analysis, usually based on journals indexed by Institute for Scientific Information, measures the impact of the research or rather the usefulness of research to other scientists doing related work. However, a bibliometric analysis of this kind will not be representative of the whole research effort in the field of nuclear science and technology where a relatively high proportion of the output (45%) is captured in the non-journal literature. Publication counts based upon all publications indexed in the INIS database, enables us to obtain statistics and scientific indicators regarding the overall research effort, trends and gaps within this particular field. Average productivity counts and time series analysis (1976-2000) give a glimpse into the Australia's performance in the sub-fields of Nuclear Chemistry, Nuclear Physics, Materials Science and Nuclear Medicine. It shows that Australia's share of publications has risen markedly in the 1990s, in particular for Materials Science and Nuclear Medicine