SCIENTIFIC AND TECHNICAL INFORMATION (VNTIC)

[Scientific Aist Technical Infocenter of Russia]

   THE SCIENTIFIC AND TECHNICAL INFORMATION CENTRE OF RUSSIA:

                      Status and Activities


     The Scientific  and  Technical  Information Centre of Russia
(the Russian acronym - VNTIC) is  a  nation-wide  (i.e.  federal)
information  institution  responsabile for the maintenance of the
complete all-Russia (before 1991 - all-Union) fund for scientific
R&D   reports   (projects)   and   dissertations  (candidate  and
doctoral). The presentation of the documents to the VNTIC fund is
obligatory  for  all  the organizations engaged in state budgeted
scientific  research  and  development  and  is  carried  out  in
accordance  with  the  Federal  Law  of  the  Russian Federation,
adopted by Russian Parlament and published in January  17,  1995.
The  fund  is  supported  in  two forms:  human-redable full-text
primary  documents  (reports  and   dissertations),   stored   on
microfiches;  machine-redable  (secondary)  documents,  contaning
bibliographic descriptions and abstracts of the primary ducuments
and  stored  in  database structure to provide online information
search and retrival. Thus, VNTIC is original database geneator.
     For more  25  year  of  VNTIC  existence  there  are above 5
million documents tatally  accumulated  in  the  fund  reflecting
state-of  the  main  results  of R&D activities undertaken in the
former Soviet Union (FSU) and now in Russia and civering all  the
areas  of  human knowledge including not only exect,  natural and
engineering sciences and technology but also social sciences, the
humanities, arts, medicine and religion.
     The uniqueness of the VNTIC fund is twofold:  the  documents
presented in the fund are not being published and circulated i.e.
they exist only in two type- or  computer-written  copies  on  of
which  belongs  to  the  author of the source institution and the
other goes to VNTIC and since the  documents  are  not  available
elsewhere  including such fomous Russian information institutions
like The All-Russia  institution  for  Scientific  and  Technical
Information  (VINITI),  International  Centre  for Scientific and
Technical Information (ICSTI) and  largest  regional  information
centres;  the information from the documents becomes available to
users with the least  possible  delay  of  about  2-3  months  as
compared  to  1-2  years  for  the  same  (or even less complete)
information to appear in a published  form  (in  journals,  book,
monographs).
     The VNTIC fund,  therefore,  is  an  integral  part  of  the
national  scientific  and  cultural  wealth  of  the  Russia  and
undoubtfully is of the world importance and value.  In  the  long
run the information from the fund may save billions of dollars to
the world  scientific  community  providing  information  on  the
expensive  and  sometimes harmful to human health and environment
researches (say,  in chemistry  or  nuclear  physics)  that  have
already  been carried out in the FSU or Russia.  The fund and the
databases of VNTIC are of great interest not only to  specialists
but also to generalists - economists,  politologists,  ecologists
or NGOlogists  -  who  are  engaged  in  transformation  research
concerning Russia and FSU.

     The fund and databases allow VNTIC to provide users with the
following kinds of services:
     - publishing the abstract journals on 28 series;
     - partial database dessemination in machine-readable from on
       different subject areas;
     - online and delay search database access;
     - translating  the  abstracts  of  reports and dissertations
       into English language databases;
     - publishing  the English language abstracted editions on 10
       series;
     - publishing  the  Russian  and  English  version of the R&D
       organization directories;
     - database  on  CD-ROM with the Russian and English language
       documents.

     For more information, call or write:

              VNTIC,
              14, Smolnaya St., Moscow, 125493, Russia

     tel/fax: +(095)456-8593       E-mail: aist at glas.apc.org
         fax: +(095)456-7521               aistmain at vntic.msk.su