(Viniti) of the Russian Academy of Sciences 113

All Russian Institute for Scientific and Technical Information (viniti) of the Russian Academy of Sciences 113

ACTA INFORM MED. 2012 Jun; 20(2): 113-117 doi: 10.5455/aim.2012.20.113-117 Recieved: 25 January 2012 Accepted: 30 March 2012 © AVICENA 2012

All Russian Institute for Scientific and Technical Information (viniti) of the Russian Academy of Sciences

Valentina Markusova All Russian Institute for Scientific and Technical Information (VINITI), Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russian Federation

Corresponding author: Valentina Markusova, PhD. 20 Usievicha Street, Moscow 125190, Russian Federation. E-mail: [email protected]

Review disseminate scientific information on various 100,000 new records are added monthly. SUMMARY fields of science and technology, published in VINITI publishes the Journal Abstract (JA) on The aim of the paper is to overview the leading 70 countries in 40 languages, selected from 19 fields of science, including medicine, con- information processing domain in Russia and books, journals, conference proceedings, and taining about a million publications annually. Eastern Europe, namely All Russian Institute patents. A special attention is given to the jour- Two thirds of these records are foreign and for Scientific and Technical Information (VI- nal selection and depositing manuscripts (a 36.7% – Russian sources. NITI) of the Russian Academy of Sciences. kind of grey literature), an important source Key words: Russian database, VINITI, journal Russian science structure is different from for Russian research. VINITI has created the selection, science structure, journal abstract, that in the Western Europe and the US. The largest database containing about 30 million information service, biomedicine. main aim of VINITI is to collect, process and records dating back to 1980. About 80,000-

1. Introduction 1944, a decision was taken to set up der its supervision 35 research insti- the Academy of Medical Sciences tutes. In Soviet times, the AMS had 1.1. Scientific research in the (AMS) to carry out medical research the All-Union Institute on Medical Russian Federation and to respond to medical problems Information (AUIMI) aimed to col- For many years, Russia has had emerging in the course of the Great lect, process and disseminate infor- an excellent track record for world- Patriotic war (1941-1945). The found- mation related to medical sciences. class scientific research conducted ing president of AMS was outstand- Due to economic turmoil of 1990s, in research institutes under the um- ing military surgeon N. Burdenko. AUIMI was closed down, and its brella of the Academy of Sciences of Alongside with AMS, the Acade- section, Central Medical Library, the USSR (now–the Russian Acade- my of Sciences of the USSR contin- became part of the First Moscow my of Sciences–RAS). As a science ued to conduct research in neurol- State Medical University named af- historian stated, “the Soviet Union, ogy, immunology, neurochemistry ter I.M. Sechenov. like all modern countries, has large and related problems. There were The main cancer research body universities, all supported by the also the Academy of Education (for- is now the Russian Oncology Re- state...” (1). Historically, the univer- merly the Academy of Pedagogy) search Center named after N.N. sities with a great scientific potential founded in 1943 and the Academy Blokhin (RORC) founded in 1980. were concentrated in the two large on Agricultural Science founded in N.N. Blokhin was the founding di- cities, Moscow and Leningrad, such 1929 by world renown scientist N. rector of the Center for many years. as Moscow State University and Vavilov. The leading cancer hospital in Rus- Leningrad State University (now–St The Ministry of Health and So- sia, four research institutes (the Re- Petersburg State University). cial Development (MHSD) of the search Institute of Clinical Oncolo- Throughout the whole Sovi- Russian Federation currently sup- gy, the Research Institute of Pediat- et period (1917-1991) there was only ports several research institutes. ric Oncology, the Research Institute one agency responsible for basic re- Of these, several institutes were in- of Carcinogenesis, and the Research search in natural and applied scienc- volved in the proliferation of bio- Institute of Experimental Diagnos- es and biomedicine in all Soviet re- logical weapon and transferred un- tic and Tumor Therapy) and region- publics, namely the Academy of Sci- der the jurisdiction of MHSD by a al branches in the Altai region and ences of the USSR. The Academy decree of the President Boris Yelt- in Khabarovsk are affiliated to the was funded by the Government. In sin (2). The Russian AMS has un- Center. Despite all these achieve-

ACTA INFORM MED. 2012 Jun; 20(2): 113-117 / Review 114 All Russian Institute for Scientific and Technical Information (viniti) of the Russian Academy of Sciences

ments, Russian research activity is formation related to basic and ap- scientific disciplines and technolo- still focused on physical sciences. plied research. To expand the Insti- gies, economic issues and medicine. The latter was noticed 30 years ago tute’s activity and to ensure variety The database is accessible on- (3). of its tasks, the Government reor- line. It allows a quick access to bib- In the 1990s, there was a signifi- ganized it into the All-Union Insti- liographic descriptions, abstracts, cant decrease in total Russian re- tute for Scientific and Technical In- full texts, multimedia, and other in- search output (by 11%). Though formation in 1955. VINITI began to formation. CD-ROM database and the output in physical sciences in- process scientific literature and to electronic versions of the Journal creased by 12%, it was offset by a publish Journal Abstracts (JA) from Abstract (JA) are being issued. 44% decrease in life sciences (4). In- 1953. Its publications were used by a During the seven decades of the terestingly, the focus on physical variety of research institutions, de- existence of the USSR, Russian be- sciences reinforced by a Presidential sign bureaus and industrial enter- came the language of scientific com- Decree (N576, 2002), which listed prises. As Eugene Garfield empha- munication in Eastern Europe, Asia priority research programmes, and sized in his speech on the 50th jubi- and some American countries. As stated that any additional financial lee of VINITI (2002), his company, a result, VINITI’s JA became pop- resources had to be primarily allo- the Institute for Scientific Informa- ular in the former Soviet republics cated to “hard science” rather than tion (ISI) in Philadelphia, USA got and many other countries. VINITI to life and environmental sciences. its name in 1960, “in part inspired users are now scattered in 68 coun- It is reminiscent of the regulations by the founding of VINITI” (5). tries and among the subscribers are of the first half of the twentieth cen- For three decades (1957-1986), many Russian ex-pats. tury, when physics played a leading the Institute was headed by Profes- VINITI employs about 800 pro- role in sciences (2). Some data on sor A.I. Mikhailov, the outstanding fessionals with educational back- human resources and funding for scholar, who is regarded as one of grounds in various fields of basic different academies are presented in the founders of the Soviet school of and applied sciences, fluent in for- Table 1. information science. He managed to eign languages. The institute con- Dr.Sc.& attract many scholars and to involve sists of 15 departments that process Sciences Total staff Funding Ph.D. them in the Institute’s activities. literature and produce JA on a spe- 96,969 34,613 41,489 Many generations of information cific field of science (e.g., physics Agriculture 29,854 4,420 3,820 professionals and librarians grew and astronomy, earth sciences) and Medical 13,272 5,715 4,067 up reading his books published in a special department for journal Education 1,582 776 389 coauthorship with Prof. A.I. Cherny and book acquisition. The journal and Prof. R.S. Gilyarevskii (6, 7). evaluation and selection is an on- Table 1. Human resources and funding for four Russian academies, 2008. Funding in million For almost six decades, VINI- going process, with journals added rubles (approximately 30,000 USD). TI has been the largest informa- and deleted monthly. tion center in Eastern Europe. The Owing to the VINITI’s mission 1.2. Goals of VINITI, information main task of the Institute is to pro- to comprehensively process litera- products and services vide researchers, designers and engi- ture on basic and applied sciences Currently, there are about 400 neers with information on the latest published in Russian, its staff has research institutes affiliated to achievements in science and tech- different approaches to the selec- the Russian Academy of Scienc- nology around the world. tion of local and foreign journals. es (RAS). Of these, the All Russian Currently, VINITI employees re- Editors evaluating journals are ex- Institute for Scientific and Techni- ceive and process literature on vari- perts in various foreign languages cal Information (VINITI) occupies ous fields of science and technology, and library science. They frequent- a special place as a leading agency published in 70 countries in 40 lan- ly consult editors with background in information processing. VINITI guages, selected from books, jour- in a specialized field of science to in- turns 60th jubilee in October 2012. nals, conference proceedings, inven- dex a new journal in JA (e.g., physi- In 1952, the USSR government set tion descriptions and patents, and cists, medical editors). Given the ab- up the Institute for Scientific Infor- deposited scientific papers (a kind of sence of a local specialized informa- mation as part of the USSR Acade- grey literature). They review about a tion agency on medical sciences, VI- my of Sciences. The opening of the million publications annually, two NITI took the responsibility to fill Institute coincided with “the golden thirds of which are taken from for- the gap and collected medical litera- time” for Soviet basic research ex- eign sources. This comprehensive ture since 1998. ceedingly funded to strengthen mil- information flow forms the largest The following criteria are now itary power. VINITI’s main goal was database in Russia on natural, ap- considered for indexing foreign to facilitate access to world achieve- plied and technical sciences. The journals in VINITI: basic publish- ments in science and technology for database contains about 30 million ing standard, peer-review, number the USSR research and engineer- records, and about 80,000-100,000 of other databases covering the jour- ing community. To implement this new records are added monthly. nal, number of delivery agencies, vi- task, VINITI had to process, publish The database consists of numerous sual analysis, and electronic version and disseminate comprehensive in- subfields covering a vast variety of (8). The following indexing criteria

Review / ACTA INFORM MED. 2012 Jun; 20(2): 113-117 All Russian Institute for Scientific and Technical Information (viniti) of the Russian Academy of Sciences 115

are applied to local journals selec- Country name 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 tion: a) journals published by the RAS (more than 200 titles, includ- Russia 184586 164879 149504 150328 148780 ing 155 titles published by the pub- Ukraine 13782 13928 12521 15342 13128 lishing house “Nauka”, with 119 in Byelarus 2095 970 1648 1792 1401 basic and applied sciences); b) Rus- sian journals covered by Web of Sci- Uzbekistan 139 960 1308 1569 1423 ence; c) journals included in the list Moldova 167 136 160 788 171 of journals chosen by the High Qual- Georgia 1504 64 743 465 313 ification Committee (HQC or VAK, Kyrgyzstan 117 429 110 97 82 the governmental agency approv- ing PhD and Doctor of Science the- Armenia 281 479 89 94 172 ses); d) journals covered by SCOPUS Kazakhstan 512 64 103 55 82 (180 titles). In 2010, the share of pub- Total number of publications 203183 181909 166186 170530 165552 lications in English was 49.77%, in Russian–36.9%, in Chinese–5.11%, Table 2. Statistics on the number of publications from former USSR countries covered by JA

Total Various kind Share of Number of Number of Articles in Share of Articles in book Share of Year number of of book, books/ Patents Deposited Journals journals articles/% and issues patents/% publications issues % в manuscripts

2006 993879 7733 751799 75,6 34695 164528 16,6 75820 7, 6 1734

2007 957673 7408 703608 73,5 30706 167438 17, 5 85135 8,9 1492

2008 948983 7497 704361 74,2 40761 159898 16,8 83570 8,8 1154

2009 813669 7526 657479 80,8 6053 80454 9,9 74818 9,2 918

2010 778393 7320 674346 86,6 5899 50914 6,5 52430 6,7 703 2011* only 8 517959 6961 402496 77,7 6500 83348 16,1 31602 6,1 513 months

Table 3. Statistics on publications distribution by type of documents for 2006-2011 in German–4.49%, in Ukraini- in all fields of natural, applied and • Astronomy. Geodesy. Earth observation from space and Aerial Mapping an–0.55%, in French–0.55%, and in technical sciences, economics and • Automation and Computer Engineering Japanese–0.44%. VINITI also pro- medicine. The Journal consists of • Chemistry and chemical technology cesses journal publications from the nineteen cumulative volumes, each • Electrical and power engineering former Soviet republics if these pub- focusing on a specific field of sci- • Electronics • Environmental protection. lications have Russian abstracts (9). ence, with a total of 286 issues (sub- • Geography Statistics of the number of pub- fields of science). Since 1995, JA is is- • Geology lications from former USSR coun- sued both in print and electronic • Geophysics tries covered by JA is presented in versions. • Industrial economics • Information science. Publishing and Table 2. VINITI has access to the 2.2. Electronic Journal Abstract Printing journals published by Elsevier and (ELJA) is issued with periodicity cor- • Life sciences: biology, agriculture and available on ScienceDirect platform responding to the print issues. ELJA biotechnology. (about 500 titles), to EBSCO (to 11 is an analogue of the print journal. • Mathematics. Computer sciences • Mechanics full-text databases), to Blackwell Upon requests of the users, ELJA • Medicine Publishing journals, to Cambridge can be issued on CD-ROM. Work- • Metallurgy and Welding University Press, Oxford University ing with several issues of ELJA, the • Mining Press, etc. users can create and maintain their • Physics. • Transport Statistics of publications distribu- own collection of abstracts, the so- tion by type of documents for 2006- called “mini-RZH”. Software sup- Box 1. List of VINITI Journal Abstracts and 2011 are presented in Table 3 (10). port and automated technology Databases. was created for supplementing and Statistics of publications covered 2. RESOURCES OF VINITI maintaining ELJA standard issues. by various JA during 2006-2010 is DATABASE The list of JA by field of science is presented in Table 4 (10). Main information resources are: presented in Box 1. 2.1. Journal Abstracts (Refer- 3. VINITI Database ativnyi Zhurnal) containing ab- VINITI is the largest database in stracts, summaries, and biblio- Russia available online at www.vin- graphic descriptions of publications iti.ru, with files dating back to 1981.

ACTA INFORM MED. 2012 Jun; 20(2): 113-117 / Review 116 All Russian Institute for Scientific and Technical Information (viniti) of the Russian Academy of Sciences

The total number of records is about Title of JA 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 30 million, with annual additions of Number of Number of Number of Number of Number of about one million records. VINITI Publications Publications Publications Publications Publications has a group regulating bibliograph- Automation & Computer 104776 104832 88527 80112 67331 ic information. The VINITI’s search Engineering engine is functioning without inter- Astronomy 15308 15329 21301 13561 12348 ruptions. There are approximately Life sciences 309743 302789 283239 233800 165408 one thousand search requests a day. For universal coverage of sub- Geography 28178 28542 28087 22215 16950 ject categories in natural and tech- Geology 46260 45984 45239 104125 35888 nical disciplines in the Journal Ab- Industrial Economics 43175 40623 38002 28204 27541 stract, a classification scheme (ru- Environment bricator) was developed. The rubri- 21205 20040 16933 14514 9384 protection cator is based on the deepening of the State Classification (rubricator) Mathematics 44145 39209 36865 40174 35906 of S&T literature (SRSTI) up to the Engineering 79195 70469 71575 64512 53512 level nine. The rubricator contains Medicine 60012 59879 60650 60112 61521 the following components: subject Metallurgy 24764 23791 26020 29782 23006 heading in English and Russian languages; list of keywords indicating Mechanics 28268 25213 26864 23139 19228 the frequency of their use based on Information science 10234 9203 8465 7694 6138 the five-year file of databases and -ex Transport 38546 33530 31342 23413 22240 perts’ evaluation; links of subject headings to other classifications. Physics 117725 97036 119938 79750 69402 Chemistry 223089 204342 200772 187768 143301 4. The VINITI publication Electrical & power 51919 50765 52277 41993 32390 engineering 4.1. The VINITI publication named TOTAL 1186530 1111697 1095446 994756 739973 “Index of Deposited manuscripts”, issued monthly, deserves a special Table 4. Statistics on publications covered by various JA during 2006-2010 attention. The time lag between submis- liographic description and an ab- uments is added annually. sion of a paper and its publication stract of deposited manuscripts. The 5.2. Database “MacroCyclic in a peer-reviewed journal was more full-text copy of these manuscripts Compounds and Their Complex- than 2 years in 1960s. Due to the is available upon requests of organi- es” (“Russian Crown”). This data- growing need to speed up the publi- zations or individuals through the base contains unique information cation process, VINITI became the delivery department of VINITI. The on progress made by Russian re- state repository for deposited manu- annual collection consists of about searchers on chemistry and chemi- scripts by a Government law in 1967. 1,000 manuscripts; the total collec- cal technology of macrocyclic com- A deposited manuscript is a paper tion includes about 220,000 manu- pounds and their complexes. The submitted to a peer-reviewed jour- scripts. database was created in 1993. The nal, accepted by its editorial board database is updated quarterly with and deposited in VINITI at the au- 5. Special database: Factual information on books, patents, dis- thors’ discretion. The abstract of the databases sertations, and periodical publica- paper has to be published in JA on 5.1. The Structural Database tions from The Russian Federation a relevant field of science. The paper of Chemistry (SDBC) is one of and from some former Soviet re- acquires the status of published doc- the world’s three major chemis- publics. Installed special catalogues ument after the depositing process try databases since 1975. The data- enable users to search by structure, and publishing the information in base consists of 15 million proper- substructure, and key words. The the special bibliographic index–the ties of chemical compounds, 3 mil- database is available on-line. Index of Deposited Manuscripts lion chemical reactions, more than (IDM). 6 millions chemical structures. A 6. SCOPE OF VINITI ACTIVITIES Since the Soviet times, the IDM powerful retrieval program was VINITI is a research organization has given VINITI the opportunity, implemented, enabling the search and the leader in the field of intel- on an exchange basis, to get many by structures of individual com- ligent information systems devel- valuable sources of information pounds, fragments of structures, opment in The Russian Federation. from the Chemical Abstract Service subject terms, properties and appli- It has a scientific council awarding and other information agencies free cation of compounds. Information PhD degrees and academic titles of charge. on 200,000 compounds, 100,000 subject to approval of VAK. VINI- Since 2008, IDM contains a bib- chemical reactions from 10,000 doc- TI runs the free program for PhD

Review / ACTA INFORM MED. 2012 Jun; 20(2): 113-117 All Russian Institute for Scientific and Technical Information (viniti) of the Russian Academy of Sciences 117 course and arranges various work- of UDC Tables on Russian language from 1980 to 2000, as reflected in shops on science evaluation for in- and State “Rubricator” (Classifica- the Science Citation Index, in rela- formation professionals and librar- tion) of Scientific and Technical In- tion to national politico-econom- ians. The workshops attract many formation. ic changes. Scientometrics. 2004; Russian speaking specialists. An- 59(3): 345-389. nual seminars on classification sys- 8. Delivery service 5. Garfield E. ISI-VINITI connection. tem (UDC) are also arranged. VI- Information services on the basis Remarks on 50th anniversary of NITI publishes a monthly peer-re- of VINITI S&T collections are pro- VINITI. Presented at the 6th Inter- viewed journal “Scientific and Tech- vided by the Center of Scientific In- national Conference of Informa- nical Information” (Nauchno-Tekh- formation Services (CSIS VINITI). tion Society, Intelligent Informa- nicheskaya Informatsiya): Series 1. CSIS processes requests of organization Processing and Information Organization and Methodology of tions or individuals for the follow- Technologies, VINITI, Moscow, Information Service; Series 2: Infor- ing information services: 2002. mation Processes and Systems. Both •• Copying (on paper or electronic 6. Mikhailov AI, Cherny AI, Gi- series are translated cover-to-cover copies in PDF format) of prima- lyrevskii RS. Basics of information by Springer and processed by SCO- ry sources processed for VINITI science. Moscow, Nauka, 1964. PUS. Other VINITI publications products and databases; 7. Mikhailov AI, Cherny AI, Gi- include: Russian quarterly peer-re- •• Current awareness on a specified lyrevskii RS. Scientific communi- viewed journal “International Fo- subject; cations and information science. rum of Information” (Internation- •• Retrospective retrieval; Moscow, Nauka, 1976. al journal of FID) and “Bulletin of •• These services are carried out on 8. Kirillova OV, Savinich VV. Scien- International Scientific Congresses, the basis of the collection of: tific publications from the New In- Conferences, Meetings and Exhibi- •• Domestic and foreign periodi- dependent States and Baltic coun- tions” which covers systematized in- cals (since 1991); tries. Proceedings of the Interna- formation on forthcoming and cur- •• Domestic and foreign books tional conference “Information rent events. (since 1991). society: state of art and trends of the information exchange between 6.1. Services Based on the 9. CONCLUSION New Independent States”. Mos- International and State Standards VINITI has long been in collabo- cow, VINITI, Oct 27-28, 2011; P. 73- Professionals in the field of sci- ration with Thomson Reuters, pro- 74. entific and technical information, viding access to Web of Knowledge, 9. Denisova LA, Ponomarenko TP, library science, publishing, and re- Elsevier, Springer, and many other Samokhodkina EG, Tueva EM. In- lated fields are provided with copies partners, and is eager to collaborate formation flow processed by the of international and state standards. with new partners in the EU and in VINITI: Quantitative statistics The collection of standards contains the USA. for 2006-2010; 2011. Proceedings more than 100 international stan- of the International conference dards ISO/TK 46, ISO/TK 37 and Conflict of interest: none declared. “Information society: state of art more than 80 state and intergovern- and trends of the information ex- mental standards. REFERENCES change between New Independent 1. Graham LR. What have we learned States”. Moscow, VINITI, Oct 27- 7. Classifications. about science and technology from 28, 2011; P. 49-52. Information Retrieval the Russian experience? Stanford 10. Denisova LA, Batyushko AA, Languages University Press; Stanford, Califor- Globacheva EYa. Information flow VINITI has been a member of nia, 1998. processed by the VINITI: distri- the Executive Committee of the 2. Lewison G, Markusova V. The eval- bution by documents’ type and UDC consortium since 2000. The uation of Russian cancer research. processing issues. Proceedings of Institute has exclusive rights to pub- Research Evaluation. 2010; 19(2): the International conference “In- lish and disseminate print and elec- 129-144. formation society: state of art tronic versions of UDC editions in 3. Garfield E. Citation Indexing. John and trends of the information ex- Russian. It renewed regular publica- Wiley and Sons; 1979. change between New Independent tion of Extensions and Corrections 4. Wilson C, Markusova V. Changes States”. Moscow, VINITI, Oct 27- to the UDC and complete edition in the scientific output of Russia 28, 2011; P. 53-55.

ACTA INFORM MED. 2012 Jun; 20(2): 113-117 / Review