NCIS therefore provides discounted access to JSTOR and other academic resources, offers grants for research projects, grants for conference attendance, academic conferences, and facilitates networking opportunities such as Facebook and Twitter, discipline-based online groups and local organizations of independent scholars.
NCIS recognizes regional and international partner groups in Europe, the USA and Australia, and is itself an affiliate of the American Historical Association.
In the United States, the independent scholarship movement grew in the 1970s in response to the increasing number of scholars who were not affiliated with an academic institution.
In 1986, the San Diego Independent Scholars sponsored a national conference aimed at reaching a consensus for founding a national organization which would communicate with institutions such as federal funding agencies, foundations, and learned societies, to address issues of access to research funding, research facilities, and other resources, as well as to provide a forum for scholarly exchange.
The final issue was published in 2014, when the online quarterly was retired and for a short time this was replaced by "TIS Blog".