Scientific and Technical Information, Institute of

(full name, All-Union Institute of Scientific and Technical Information; VINITI), the information organ and scientific research institution of the State Committee on Science and Technology of the Council of Ministers of the USSR and of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. Organized by the Academy of Sciences of the USSR in 1952 in Moscow. From 1952 to 1954 it was called the Institute of Scientific Information; it has had its present name since 1955.

The main tasks of VINITI are the systematic and exhaustive abstraction of the entire world literature on natural science and technology; the preparation and publication on this basis of a journal of abstracts, survey and alert information, and information bulletins on the most timely subjects; data service; and the organization, development, and coordination on a nationwide scale of scientific research in information science that is directed at the perfection of methods and means and is used in scholarly information work. The institute’s publications include Referativ-nyi zhurnal (Journal of Abstracts, since 1953, in 170 fascicles, of which 38 were issued individually and 132 were published in 25 cumulative volumes), Signa’naia informatsiia (Alert Information, since 1967, in 55 fascicles), Ekspress-informatsiia (Information Bulletin, since 1955, in 78 series), Itogi nauki and Itogi nauki i tekhniki (Science Review and Review of Science and Technology, respectively; both since 1957), and the monthly Nauchno-tekhnicheskaia informatsiia (Scientific and Technical Information, since 1962). The institute has resident and correspondence graduate programs, as well as the Council on the Defense of Dissertations and the All-Union Center for Translations of Scientific and Technical Literature and Documentation.