Opening access to nuclear R&D documents

29 October 2009

The US Department of Energy (DoE) has made available through the Internet thousands of documents and publications related to nuclear research. In collaboration with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the DoE's Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI) has made more than 180,000 documents publicly available through the IAEA's International Nuclear Information System (INIS). The INIS web-based database works to preserve nuclear knowledge by digitizing historic nuclear energy research documents dating from 1970 through to the early 1990s. The database contains over 3 million bibliographic records and 225,000 full-text documents and was opened to the public for free, unrestricted, online access in April 2009. Yury Sokolov, IAEA deputy director general for nuclear energy, said, "Thanks to the collaborative work of the IAEA and its member states, scientists and students in the nuclear field now have instant access to important research and technical information over the Internet." Speaking of the greater accessibility of such information, OSTI director Walt Warnick commented, "This tremendous body of knowledge is thus enjoying a renaissance of use and interest, and science progress will accelerate."

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