If you ever need information about biblical scholarship or biblical scholars in Japan – or about any other academic discipline, for that matter – start with the “Next-Generation Academic Information Infrastructure” (formerly GeNii – NII Scholarly and Academic Information Portal):
- Next-Generation Academic Information Infrastructure English Portal (see Content Services at bottom)
- 次世代学術コンテンツ基盤共同構築 Japanese Portal (see コンテンツサービス at bottom)
This is a great portal for information about:
- Scholarly articles and reviews*
- Theses and Dissertations*
- Books / Monographs*
- Journals, Magazines, and other Periodicals*
- University Departmental Papers, etc.
- Nationally Awarded Research Projects and Reports
- Faculty / Researcher Bios and Bibliographies
- Research Institutes, Subjects, etc.
- Japanese Academic Societies
- Academic Job Openings and other Career Information
- Scientific Terms
- And more
GeNii currently serves as a portal to these essential databases:
- CiNii – Academic articles, books, and journals
- NACSIS Webcat – University and research institute library catalogs (to be discontinued March 8, 2013)
- Webcat Plus – Books, periodicals, many new and used book store holdings, Nielsen Book Data, author bios, and much more
- KAKEN – Database of Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research
- NII-DBR – Academic Research Database Repository
- JAIRO – Japanese Institutional Repositories Online
- NII-REO – NII Repository of Electronic Journals and Online Publications
- ReaD & Researchmap – Directory Database of Research and Development Activities (also see J-GLOBAL)
- JREC-IN – Japan Research Career Information Network
- Sciterm – Scientific terms database
I especially like the fact that many publication search results indicate which universities currently hold them.
For most accurate results, it is best to use the databases separately. Note, however, that the National Institute of Informatics is working to improve GeNii’s general search feature by developing a platform “to integrate the contents of the services and link them to scientific information resources in and outside Japan.”
Do you have any tips or suggestions for using any of these databases? Or do you recommend any online databases not included here? If so, please leave a comment and let me know!
