bibliographic database
A bibliographic database is a database of bibliographic records. This is an organised online collection of references to published written works like academic journal, journal and newspaper articles, conference proceedings, reports, government an ...
service for material in Japanese academic libraries, especially focusing on Japanese works and English works published in
Japan
Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean off the northeast coast of the Asia, Asian mainland, it is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan and extends from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea ...
. An early trial version of the database was a component of its predecessor called GeNii, available online at least since June 2002.
A complete version of CiNii has been available since April 2005. The service searches from within the databases maintained by the NII itself (Citation Database for Japanese Publications, CJP), as well as the databases provided by the Japan Science and Technology Agency ( J-STAGE), the
National Diet Library
The is the national library of Japan and among the largest libraries in the world. It was established in 1948 for the purpose of assisting members of the in researching matters of public policy. The library is similar in purpose and scope to ...
of Japan, institutional repositories, and other organizations.
As of March 2020, the database contains more than 22 million articles from more than 3,600 publications. A typical month (in 2012) saw more than 30 million accesses from 2.2 million unique visitors, and is the largest and most comprehensive database of its kind in Japan. Although the database is multidisciplinary, the largest portion of the queries it receives is in the humanities and social sciences field, perhaps because CiNii is the only database that covers Japanese scholarly works in this field (as opposed to the natural, formal, and medical sciences which benefit from other databases).
Database identifiers
The database assigns a unique identifier, ''NII Article ID'' (NAID), to each of its journal article entries. A different identifier, ''NII Citation ID'' (NCID or 書誌ID) aka ''NACSIS-CAT Record ID'', is used for books.
NCID examples
* for the 1951 Little, Brown edition and of '' The Catcher in the Rye''
* for the 2010 Penguin edition of ''The Catcher in the Rye''
* for a 1952 edition of ''Kiken na nenrei'' (), for a 1964 edition of ''Rai-mugi batake de tsukamaete'' (), and for a 2003 edition of ''Kyatchā in za rai'' (), all three being Japanese translations of ''The Catcher in the Rye''
* for a 1997 edition of ''Mai tian li de shou wang zhe'' (麦田里的守望者), a Chinese translation of ''The Catcher in the Rye''.
Identifiers are also assigned to authors of books, and of journal articles, in two separate series (so an author may have a different identifier value in each). For example, Shinsaku Kimoto i DA00432173 for books an 9000002393144 for journal articles.
List of academic databases and search engines
This page contains a representative list of major databases and search engines useful in an academic setting for finding and accessing articles in academic journals, institutional repository, institutional repositories, archives, or other collecti ...