The INIS Repository contains bibliographic references and full-text documents of conventional and non-conventional literature, including scientific and technical reports, conference proceedings, patents and theses.

It covers all areas of IAEA’s activities, including nuclear engineering and technology, nuclear safety and radiation protection, safeguards and non-proliferation, applications of nuclear and isotope techniques, nuclear and high energy physics, nuclear and radiation chemistry, nuclear applications in life sciences, legal aspects, and environmental and economic aspects of nuclear and non-nuclear energy sources. 

INIS maintains a multilingual thesaurus in Arabic, Chinese, English, French, German, Japanese, Russian and Spanish, providing translations of thousands of technical terms that help with navigating and searching the collection.

INIS was established in 1970 in line with the IAEA's mandate "to foster the exchange of scientific and technical information on peaceful uses of atomic energy". It is operated by the IAEA in collaboration with over 130 countries.

INIS assists its Member States in building their nuclear information capacities through its eLearning courses and training events. INIS training seminars are generally held every other year in Vienna, covering all aspects of INIS operations, including selection criteria, abstracting, descriptive cataloguing, indexing, retrieval, marketing and promotion. The courses provide comprehensive instructions about input preparation and use of the INIS repository.

Through the IAEA’s Technical Cooperation Programme, INIS helps countries build and expand their nuclear information capacities, such as providing technical assistance in organizing their institutional digital repositories.