There is a long history of attempts to unify and rationalise academic research. Taking the example of VINITI, the Soviet Union’s centralised approach to organising global research, Björn Hammarfelt and Johanna Dahlin explore how an organisation that at its height employed tens of thousands, provides a parallel and precursor to contemporary challenges in scholarly communication.

The modern preprint system, which allows researchers to share their findings before formal peer review, took shape in the early 1990s with the establishment of services such as arXiv. However, attempts to share research quickly and effectively, have a longer history. Among them, the Soviet Union’s All-Union Institute for Scientific and Technical Information (VINITI) stands out as a major, but under-explored, precursor to today’s preprint repositories. Its story also serves to demonstrate longstanding challenges and issues in recording and sharing global academic knowledge. Launched in 1952, VINITI’s ambitious mission was to centralise scientific knowledge on an unprecedented scale, with the Soviet government recognising the strategic value of controlling and disseminating scientific information. It employed over 26,000 people by the 1980s and dealt with millions of articles from across the globe.

The news of this large, centralised information centre was greeted with both curiosity and concern by American scientists and policymakers. While Sputnik might have been more spectacular, the establishment of VINITI – “the world largest scientific library” – was by some commentators perceived to have greater impact on science. Giving Soviet scientists access to foreign literature was the primary goal of the institute, but its ambitions were much grander.

While Sputnik might have been more spectacular, the establishment of VINITI – “the world largest scientific library” – was by some commentators perceived to have greater impact on science.

The founder of the institute was the chemist and president of the Soviet Academy of Sciences Alexander Nesmeyanov. He envisioned VINITI as a “colossal enrichment plant” whose raw material was “all the scientific periodicals of the world”. The process of concentration would result in abstract journals providing scientists with easy and fast access to the latest advances in their fields globally. This would be done through extensive translations, abstracting and the publication of a series of large abstract journals, referativnyi zhurnaly, that would report major findings in a condensed and accessible way. Moreover, the institute contributed significantly to advances in the emerging information science field, for example through research in “naukometri” or “Scientometrics” as it later was labelled.

One of VINITI’s most innovative features was its system of preprints, referred to as the “deposition of scientific works.” Starting in 1961, this system enabled Soviet researchers to submit scientific papers, monographs, and conference proceedings to the institute, bypassing traditional journals. These “typescripts” were catalogued, abstracted, and made accessible to the broader scientific community. As deposition became an established method, the procedure became quite elaborate. Papers deposited with VINITI would eventually be counted as publications when an abstract of the paper was printed in the referativnyi zhurnal relevant to the paper’s subject area.

Starting in 1961, this system enabled Soviet researchers to submit scientific papers, monographs, and conference proceedings to the institute, bypassing traditional journals.

To handle the manuscript deposited with VINITI, a new department was created. This department would go through all submitted manuscripts, and then evaluate their scientific quality in conversation with the corresponding scientific branch of the institute where science editors matched the manuscripts with the relevant abstract journal. The rationale behind this system was partly practical: Soviet scientific journals were overburdened with submissions, particularly from narrow, specialised fields. By allowing researchers to deposit their work directly, VINITI provided a faster route to dissemination. The deposited works could be referenced and cited in future research, giving Soviet scientists a platform to share their findings without the delays of formal publication.

In many ways, the preprint system aligned with the Soviet belief in centralised control, planning, and state ownership of intellectual property. VINITI’s preprint system can be seen as an early attempt to implement what British scientist J.D. Bernal had envisioned in The Social Function of Science (1939). Bernal who claimed that traditional journals existed for “purely sentimental reasons” advocated for the creation of centralised “clearing houses” for scientific papers that would provide fast and open access to research findings. The Soviet system, with its focus on rapid dissemination and centralised control, was perhaps the most significant realisation of this vision. By 1977, the system contained over 26,500 typescripts spread across 49 depository centres, a testament to its popularity among Soviet scientists.

By 1977, the system contained over 26,500 typescripts spread across 49 depository centres

However, VINITI’s centralised approach had limitations. While the system, in theory, facilitated faster access to research, it lacked rigorous peer review. This led to now familiar concerns about the quality and reliability of the deposited works. Moreover, as the system grew, it became increasingly bureaucratic, and thus slow. Western scientists who visited VINITI often remarked on the institute’s inefficiencies, particularly the large workforce required to manage its operations.

VINITI was created to solve the concrete and crucial problem of accessing up-to-date scientific information in Soviet society. At the same time, the visions of VINITI echo of a European tradition of grand projects to unify knowledge. The institute, which was intended to serve Soviet needs, had global ambitions and the socialist view of universalism on which it was based was evident in the truly global coverage of scientific literature. However, scientific universalist ideals were always threatened by tendencies towards isolationism and repression. and the needs of scientists were balanced by ideological motives and political campaigns.

This is still true. VINITI continues to exist on a much smaller scale. In 2022, VINITI celebrated its 70th anniversary in a political atmosphere where Russian science is again isolated, international contacts and cooperation are hard to maintain and the authorities are very cautious of all things foreign. This in many ways resemble the political atmosphere of its founding in 1952, although, of course, the information environment at the time was radically different.

the Soviet solution was not an isolated experiment, but an integrated effort which was perused in dialogue with Western initiatives.

The history of VINITI is largely forgotten. Yet, during the 1950s and 1960s it offered a radical alternative, which attracted considerable attention from foreign colleagues, for how to organise an effective system for handling the problem of “the information flood” or “information explosion”. During its early years, VINITI stood for both a vision and a practical example of a truly centralised system. Hence, by suggesting an alternative history, it provokes reflections regarding the historical, as well as contemporary, attempts to manage scientific information. What becomes obvious, from studying the history of the institute, is that the Soviet solution was not an isolated experiment, but an integrated effort which was perused in dialogue with Western initiatives. In conclusion, then, the ambitions and operations of VINITI may today appear as both old fashioned (in focusing on abstracts), bordering on the utopian (in the idea of total coverage), and as visionary and modern in its abandonment of journals and traditional forms of peer review.

This post draws on the authors’ article, Abstracting It All: The Soviet Institute of Scientific Information (VINITI) and the Promise of Centralisation, 1952–1977, published in Minerva.

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