Search

The science and technology activities in China are rapidly growing since 90s. This paper analyzes the production of scientific papers and the factor of increasing papers, and Japan-China relationship in co-authored papers. The growth rate of papers production became the sixth place in the world, the world share of papers increased by more than three times, and the papers production has concentrated on priority universities since the implementation of the top priority policy (211 project). And in internationally co-authored papers, Japan-China relationship rapidly deepens in the high share fields such as chemistries, materials, physics and engineering, while in mathematics in which China exceeds Japan, Japan-China relationship is not strong. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"The Database White Paper" was first published in 1986 and "Electronic Information Services 2008" has marked its 23rd year. The paper traces the changes in database related activities in Japan for these years by examining the annual editions of the White Paper, and would serve readers to foresee the future direction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Japan Society for Cell Biology has made an epochal decision on publication of its journal Cell Structure and Function. The sole official publication of Cell Structure and Function will be the presentation of articles at the electronic journal Website on the internet, and paper-bound issues will not be published for individual members any more. This reformation of the publication system aims at increasing the activity and the visibility of the journal by accelerating publication of high-quality papers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An increase in the number of researchers and papers, due a surge in output in Asia and other regions, has increased competition amongst researchers for global visibility. Researchers are also hindered by limited funding. This increase in competition and drop in funding has led research analysis through bibliometrics to become increasingly popular. Use of bibliometrics analysis is a key strategy to increase the value and global visibility of an institution's research efforts. The paper provides an overview of Japan's position in the global scholarly research landscape by reviewing five case studies from Japanese research institutions, Nagoya University, University of Tokyo, Keio University, Yamaguchi University and Okayama University that are utilizing bibliometrics data to analyze their research efforts. It also explores the role of biblio-data within in the global research community and the challenges it presents. The studies were presented at a symposium held by Thomson Reuters in association with the University of Tokyo in June, 2013. Custom assessments of research impact move beyond previous measurements to address a university's unique needs and requirements. Some of these are author disambiguation services and Research Consulting Services. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses an issue of language that is typical in the dissemination of published scientific research in Japan by presenting underlying data. We matched domestic and international literature databases to analyze the number of STM papers from Japan's universities in the light of languages used. The results show that Japanese academic researchers tend to use English in their original papers and Japanese in their interpretive literature, short notes and conference papers and further that English papers show little growth in the number during the past decade. It became clear that the total number of English papers from academics currently fails to reflect the values universities place on publishing research output in English. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Evaluation of scientific performance is a major factor that determines the behavior of both individual researchers and the academic institutes to which they belong. Because the number of researchers heavily outweighs the number of available research posts, and the competitive funding accounts for an everincreasing proportion of research budget, some objective indicators of research performance have gained recognition for increasing transparency and openness. It is common practice to use metrics and indices to evaluate a researcher's performance or the quality of their grant applications. Such measures include the number of publications, the number of times these papers are cited and, more recently, the h-index, which measures the number of highly-cited papers the researcher has written. However, academic institutions and funding agencies in Japan have been rather slow to adopt such metrics. In this article, I will outline some of the currently available metrics, and discuss why we need to use such objective indicators of research performance more often in Japan. I will also discuss how to promote the use of metrics and what we should keep in mind when using them, as well as their potential impact on the research community in Japan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

13 years have passed since J-STAGE was launched. At present no one could deny that its user interface and functions were already out of date comparing to foreign established e-journals. So JST has developed a new system called "J-STAGE3" in order to offer better usability and give powerful dissemination of academic papers from Japan. As the result of it, they will be able to enjoy the following things: 1) integration of two databases, Journal@rchive and J-STAGE, 2) new design/interface, 3) introduction of international standard XML format, 4) advanced subscription management, 5) saving cost of publishers, and 6) improving J-STAGE online submission and review system. At the end of March 2011, we conducted a market research on current status of dig itization on Japanese society journals. The report told us that digitization ratio of those was 62% in total but it was 34% in humanities/social sciences. Or it was 92% in English journals and 55% in Japanese ones. It means that we need further promotion of digitization. In this paper, we discuss functions and direction of J-STAGE3 as well as our role in promotion of digitization of Japanese society journals [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

PATLISYS-J is the evaluation system based on analyzing and visualizing the relation between science papers and patents, that we developed to examine how JST-funded projects contribute to scientific innovation. In this paper, we introduce a way of visualization of the results of analysis, utilization of the dictionary data accumulated by JST until now and the actual cases of visualization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Science and Technology of Advanced Materials (STAM), which is an international academic journal in materials science, celebrates its 10th anniversary in 2009. The journal was founded in 1999 by the members of materials science related academic societies, in response to the momentum toward the creation of an international, high-profile, professional journal in Japan, a country leading the research in materials science. Most Japanese academic journals are published by academic societies as part of their activities; members support the review and editing of the papers as their community activities, and these academic societies gain profit or improve their social profile through the journal publication. STAM stands in a unique position in that the entire process of publication and management is carried out, in practice, by the National Institute for Materials Science (NIMS), although STAM is a product of the cooperation between NIMS and several academic societies. NIMS not only carries out research studies but also foster information dissemination research their achievements as the only institute specializing in materials science in Japan. The publication of an academic journal is thus considered as a core infrastructure development of NIMS. The goals of STAM are to publish review papers on marked achievements and progress in research and to share them in a community of materials scientists using the NIMS network and collaborative institutions at home and abroad, under the enthusiastic leadership of the NIMS President. To this end, NIMS, despite its institutional nature, must maintain the editorial operation and stable publication of STAM. Through a stepwise improvement of its operation and editorial system, STAM evolved from a subscription-based journal to an institute-supported open-access journal in January 2008, This indicates a change in emphasis from quantity, i.e., the number of papers, to quality, as the journal aims to include only papers essential to materials researchers. STAM adopts the model of a journal led by a community of researchers, in which scientists can freely report and review their achievements (free to submit), read papers (free to read), and obtain the copyright themselves (author-friendly copyright). The perspective from the time of creation to the maturation of STAM is overviewed by comparing STAM with New Journal of Physics (published by Institute of Physics Publishing), the academic journal launched in England before STAM with the same principle and one 01: the successful open-access journal models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the recent state of open access publishing focusing on scholarly societies in Japan. The Chemical Society of Japan introduced an open access option which results in a clear difference in the number of downloads between OA papers and non-OA papers. It also shows a certain difference in cited times, but it is found that it is related to reviewing time rather than OA. Few other Japanese societies do open access publishing. Many of them provide e-journals free of charge but do not have clear policies toward institutional repositories. It is a result of the unique situation in Japanese scholarly publishing in that they do not operate at high profit margins. This situation gives Japanese societies a good chance for implementation of OA. Scholarly publishing in Japan, along with researchers, should take advantage of this depending on each situation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For e-publishing of scholarly journals, it is necessary to prepare metadata represented by XML, which allows for many electronic functions like searching and linking. In Japan many publishers still prepare metadata after printing production and hence are unable to take advantage of many beneficial aspects such as early web release. The Chemical Society of Japan has explored e-publishing with SGML, TeX, and other markup languages with respect to international compatibility. In this paper, new XML based e-publishing and related frameworks initiated from 2009 are introduced. These frameworks have been improved based on consideration of international trends of e-publishing and the strengths and weaknesses of previous systems. In this new framework, NLM-DTD based XML can be easily produced from MS-Word by using the tool eXtyles and galley proofs are semi-automatically produced with XML. Papers can then be released online directly after author proofreading. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To introduce electronic system in the submission and reviewing processes for Bioscience, Biotechnology, and Biochemistry, Japan Society for Bioscience, Biotechnology and Agrochemistry selected the system that J-STAGE developed, J-STAGE offered the online system that was mostly equivalent to the current "on-paper" processes for submission/reviewing, by which Japanese can be used for writing report, the period from submission to online preview can be shortened . Operation began in June, 2005, and it has been working successfully without any troubles. The online system reduced times and efforts of i) mailing, ii) watching the editing! reviewing!revising processes, iii) checking the load of the editorial board members, iv) requesting the editors/reviewers to handle submitted manuscripts, v) notifying the results to a contributer, and vi) delivering final data to the print companies etc. Moreover, labors of secretariat that were transiently increased after the initial application of the online system were dramatically decreased by improving the manuals for both contributors and reviewers. The on-paper submission was decreased to zero in two years of the introduction. Moreover, total number of submission has increased by 14%, and the review period has been shortened 15 days from 77 days. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Works or contents are actively used in information networks and web environments. Differences among them can be compared to those between analog environment and digital environment in terms of relationships between copyrighted works (with acts of transmitting the works) and the media. The relationship of the rights of those works involves "Law on the Creation, Protection and Exploitation of Digital Contents", "Copyright Law" and "Law on Management Business of Copyright and Neighboring Rights". The rights protected by these three laws are described differently as "copyright", "author's rights and related rights" and "copyright and neighboring rights", respectively. This paper explains the differences among "copyright", "author's rights and related rights" and "copyright and neighboring rights". We can find out the relationships between rights management and the three rights to ownership of three rights of a maker of cinematographic works within the framework of "Japanese Copyright Law". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"Open data" attracts attention as part of the information disclosure by governments and public institutions. Although the spread of the open data movement in Japan is behind as compared with the Western countries, quality and quantity of data are improved quickly by efforts of governmental agencies and citizens. In this paper, we introduce advanced case in Japan and discuss issues and future view of open data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Open source programming language Ruby has attracted attention in information technology industry, which was invented and opened from Japan. The language specification of Ruby was confirmed as an International Standard, ISO/IEC 30170 in 2012. This process will improve the stability and reliability of Ruby, and the expansion of the business use of Ruby is also expected. This paper shows the background why Ruby and Ruby on Rails attract attention, on the strength of Open Source business models. And it also shows the fruits and issues of local industry promotion of Matsue City, using Ruby as a regional resource. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The IP5 offices of CN, EP, JP, KR and US have been carrying out Common Hybrid Classification (CHC) project. It was expected that the project would harmonize each office's internal classification scheme (FI/F-term of JPO and CPC of EPO/USPTO) and would make International Patent Classification (IPC) more detailed. The JPO has also been using its resources to advance CHC Project. However, the progress is not very good. This paper explains these recent trends on the patent classification including CHC project. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The character code on Basic Resident Registration Network in Japan was designed as an extension of UCS (Universal Coded Character Set). And it was planned to be used as an "open" character code. But it now becomes a "Galapagos" code because of its misunderstanding of UCS. In this paper the author warns that the character code on Basic Resident Registration Network is already unconformable to UCS and he shows the way to break away from it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The publishing of educational con tents on the In te met in Japan is gene rally re la ted to the way OpenCourseWare (OCW) and the iTunes U function. Their setups depend on attitudes towards the protection and limitation of copyright such as creative commons license and fair use. That is to say, these attitudes derive from an understanding and interpretation based on the social systems of the United States. Therefore, when furthering the open publication on the Internet of educational contents, the differing social systems of the United States and Japan make it necessary to clarify legal and ethical rights clearance from the point of view of Japanese social systems. This paper will build on the legal and ethical measures taken with regard to the Open University of Japan's published materials in order to discuss the copyright and related rights clearance necessary for the open Internet publication of educational contents in Japan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research fronts analysis identifies emerging areas of research through observing co-clustering in highly-cited papers. This article introduces the concept of research fronts analysis, explains its methodology and provides case examples. It also demonstrates developing research fronts in Japan by looking at the past winners of Thomson Reuters Research Fronts Awards. Research front analysis is currently being used by the Japanese government to determine new trends in science and technology. Information professionals can also utilize this bibliometric as a research evaluation tool. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reviews the Michinoku-Shinrokuden, a joint international project of more than 80 institutes to digitally archive data from the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake Disaster. The archive aims to be a knowledge base for studying the disaster and also preparing countermeasures for the major earthquakes and tsunamis anticipated in the not-so-distant future in the Tokai, Tonan and Nankai areas in Japan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Regarding innovation measurement utilizing patent information, a number of researchers are making great efforts to measure a "patent value (patent quality)." For patent valuation, patent classification and citation are often utilized as patent information. Also, biotechnological field is attracting attention from the viewpoint of application to environmental or medical study, and considerable researches on patent valuation are ongoing in this technical field. However, it is not enough recognized that researchers cannot be too careful when they deal with classification information in the biotech field because patent classification structure in this field is not well-established. And also, it is not known enough that citation patterns of both academic papers and patent documents are so complicated that the patterns cannot be easily generalized. In this article, the issues above were verified from a position based on working experiences of biotech patent examiner at Japan Patent Office, and considerations and implications were given on what patent valuation should be. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The society of knowledge economy, brought about by the rapid growth of information and communication technology, has drastically changed the environments surrounding libraries. The digitization and networked distribution of library materials have expanded the skills and knowledge required for librarians from those for printed materials into digital materials and their networked dissemination. In response to such demands, a system of assuring quality of education and the equivalency of professional qualifications has been developed in Europe and North America. Correspondingly, many library schools have changed their names to information schools and reformed curriculum contents. Notwithstanding such global trends, Japan' s professional education system for library and information professionals is left behind. This paper explores changes required for the library and information professional education system in order for Japan' s libraries to be able to survive as the infrastructure to support our free-access to information in the knowledge-based economy, and proposes necessary efforts for these changes to be materialized. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes the update of the survey conducted in 2008 on e-journal subscription among the private companies. 507 people respond to a questionnaire sent to the bibliographic database "JDream II" users in the period from February to March 2011. The results show that e-journal subscription rate still stays low at 33 % small increase of 47% from the previous survey. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Kyushu University newly opened the Department of Library Science at the Graduate School of Integrated Frontier Sciences in April 2011. This paper introduces the vision and the significance of this new department in the following steps: firstly mentioning the idea and the purposes of education and research in the department after a summary of the background of this establishment, and then describing talent development plan and career paths for students and analyzing the results of the questionnaire survey on social needs for talent, and finally explaining the feature of the curriculum and the faculty structure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright policy and copyright terms have a direct effect on the proper usage of academic papers. However, English journals from Japanese academic society publishers are facing the issue to deal with copyrighted materials and/or their licensing processes. In 2010 a survey was conducted on the copyright practices of Japanese academic societies. Half of the sample societies publish their English journals from commercial publishers. In the literature research copyright terms for 19 societies and 5 commercial publishers were analyzed using 6 points; the assignment of copyright, the moral rights, the licensing property rights, the rights of authors, the responsibilities of the author and the governing law and jurisdiction. After analyzing, 8 societies, 1 national research institute and 2 commercial publishers were interviewed. From the results of the literature research and the interview survey, we made 2 English templates for copyright practices in the current conditions were made. Two final legally-valid templates were published online. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, a software tool to analyse on-going and rapidly changing natural or workplace incidents for emergency management was described. The tool, or TRENDREADER, selects the most informative documents out of the corpus of customer generated digital text contents based on the sum of discriminating values obtained by residual analysis of Temporal TFIDF. The term corpus refers to a collection of information available in public domain in the form of web news, twitter, and SNS, or classified and restricted information. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

National Center for Industrial Property Information and Training (INPIT) offers e-learning materials, called IPe·e-learning, made based on knowledge, experience and know-how of the Japan Patent Office (JPO). Although the contents of the IP·e-learning are designed mainly for training of JPO staff, the course materials are effective and useful for the people learning intellectual property. INPIT has started to provide the IP·e-learning to the public. The IP·e-learning is available free of charge after user registration via INPIT Homepage. In this paper, we introduce the outline of the IP·e-learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tracing the citation linkage between parents and scientific research papers is now focused more. Japan Sciences and Technology Agency (JST), as the Funding Agency for promoting technology transfer and innovation, must inform the public about the evidence and evaluation on governmental R&D investment. JST forged a system for the contribution of basic science to technology by tracing the citation linkage between patents and scientific research results from JST R&D investment based on those citation linkages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the research impact and influence of Japan Science Technology Agency (JST) as compared with that an overseas funding agency. Discussions include special considerations, methodology, indicators, and findings of the comparative analysis. In self-evaluating the FY2008 research impact and influence, the citation data of articles from JST Targeted Basic Research Program were compared to that of articles from an overseas funding agency: conditions representing the features or nature of the Program implementation were first established, and articles meeting the requirements were extracted, followed by comparison using two indicators, viz (1) the total number of citations received by articles within the category of certain research topic and (2) the total number of articles cited amongst the world's top 1% per research topic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tottori prefectual library has been changing rapidly in terms of service for its users. There are two goals in this change. They are: "Let people in Tottori understand the basic functions of library", "Let people recognize library as a reliable source of information which can resolve regional and personal problems". In order to meet these goals effectively, we have analyzed the library by SWOT analysis model. In this paper, we will introduce the results in four aspects: (1) Do we inform the library's function to people and administrational staffs of Tottori prefecture (do we exploit our strength fully), (2) In the time of opportunity, is there anything left yet to do (opportunity), (3) How can we make up for our weaknesses, (4)ls the threat really a threat? Also, as a case study, we will introduce our "Dreams come true in library" award, which is funded by the "Supporting regional library service" of the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"Research note" or "laboratory note" is basically a media, a kind of recording storage of "intellectual information" such as data and/of ideas about research and laboratory works. The note can be regarded as "research tool" or "laboratory management tool" for the sake of creation of intellectual properties. However, for the current days, research note has been regarded as "legal risk management tool" of intellectual properties. Different meanings lead to not only different usages on different purposes, but also to the ways of encouraging use of research notes. This paper reports the results of a survey of current use in Japanese universities and colleges, and discusses the change and variation of the meanings of research note. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes experiments for defining the significance score of patent by using patent citations. We assume that the more highly a patent is cited, the higher significance score the patent has. Based on this assumption, we investigated what kind of patent-specific feature about patent citation is effective for detecting important patent. Through the experiments using Japanese patents, we found that the citation by applicant is more effective factor than the citation by examiner. We also found that the self citation is an important factor. By incorporating these findings to the significance score, about 65% samples of important patents appeared within the top 50 ranking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Japanese universities are in competitive environment and need to distribute their information to public, especially high school students and their parents. American universities had a similar experience ten years ago. In the twentieth century, some universities missed or cheated about own information, which was used by college guide books. This problem caused disappointment and criticism from the public. While these issues, some people related higher education on inside and outside, administrators, faculty, staffs, college guide publishers and others, they made Common Data Set (CDS) to this problem. CDS is a set of standards and definitions of data items that mainly used by guidebook publishers for collecting institution's information. This paper looks at the process of consensus development of Common Data Set and suggests to quality assurance in the context of Japanese universities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While F-journals become popular among researchers, publishing businesses have been converting from print to online, resulting in the regulation of usage and copyrights being revised to fit such changes for license businesses. However, E-journals in Japan still provide free services and have not caught up with the change of regulations that relate to license and copyright matters. It is also not clear how societies in Japan will adopt to open access movements. This paper describes some results of a survey of E-journals on the J-STAGE platform showing some problems and potential solutions for copyright and license matters of scholarly publishing in Japan. It also describes a potential advantage in Japan which may lead to a new model for scholarly publishing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the process of document search, the selection of search term is essential. Especially in the nursing field there is a characteristic tendency in the selection of search terms. The searchers are apt to select non- technical terms but words locally used or phrases that are not appropriate for searching. As a librarian we are in the position to advice the users how to select effective search terms. So we studied how the existing searching system covers the terms and phrases that actually selected by the persons in the nursing field. We regard the author keywords, which are indicated in papers written by nurses as the search terms that are actually selected keywords when they search. As a study subject we select "Nihon Kangogakkai Ronbunshu" which is the proceedings of the Japan Nursing Association. The total of 9,392 author keywords is collected from the 2,538 articles published in the proceedings through 2003 to 2005. The 9,392 keywords were reduced to 5,218 unique words and phrases. We compared this 5,218 author keywords with the subject index of "Saishin Kango Sakuin (Japanese Nursing Index) ": A book-style index, and the thesauruses of two databases "lgaku-Chuo-Zassi (Japana Centra Revuo Medicina) "and "JDream II". As a result, 68% of 5,218 words and phrases are not matched with these controlled search terms. Based on the result of this study, we summarized the points of issues and the recommendation for user instruction for nurses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The activity of reformed Chiyoda Library will pose a possible solution to the difficult situation around public libraries in Japan including users' underestimation of its validity, negative effect of nationally uniform standards, lack of national policy, and unstable function of librarians in civil service systems. This paper introduces the reform process of Chiyoda Library from the concept to realization, the renowned services in detail and the unique administrative structure. The Chiyoda Library can be an innovative model of public libraries in several ways. As an inner-city information center, it provides knowledge management services with rich cultural resources. The adoption of Designated Manager System, holding continuous meeting and applying evaluation indicator for management are devoted to improve professional service thorough public-private partnership. These activities will drastically change the old framework of public service practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes how to promote e-resource services in academic libraries based on the case of Kyushu University Library. It is necessary for contents development to establish the financial base for e-collection and be conscious of a library's responsibility to the users. The knowledgebase management and the combination of electronic services, such as OpenURL link resolver, A-to-Z list, and OPAC, are effective for enhancing visibility of e-journals. For the maximum use of e-resources, academic libraries should be reorganized with integration of management, service, and technical sections specialized in e-resources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

‘Description of Bibliographic References SIST 02-1997’ and ‘Description of Bibliographic References for Digital Sources SIST 02 suppl.-2003’ were compiled both into a new edition ‘Description of Bibliographic References SIST 02-2007.’ Main purposes of revision on them were to simplify complex rules of description as possible, and to be able to apply for printed and digitalized matters based on the unified rules, so that the authors use SIST 02 easily on writing references for their paper. Remarkable changes on the new edition were introduced to help the appreciation of new one for users, and noted that eighty examples of actual bibliographic description for reference on various resources will be useful. Just before the publication of new edition, invited ‘public comments by users’, as the result some of them are took into the rules. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

J-STAGE, serviced by Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST), is an integrated electronic journal platform that hosts more than 350 electronic journal titles as of the end of January, 2007. This paper analyzed 282 journal titles with 110,000 articles which were loaded at the end of March, 2006. The proportions of access routes, whether via tables of contents or via inbound links, differ among research fields of the journals as well as languages used. The influences of authentication to read full article texts upon access to them also differ among research fields of the journals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ubiquitous computing is a new ICT (information and communication technology) trend in which we can use computers and networks in anytime and anywhere to recognize real world contexts automatically, and to utilize the information for highly functional information processing. On the other hands, digital museum is a research topic in the University of Tokyo, in which we use digital technologies for all aspects of activities in museums. This paper overviews our research activity of ubiquitous computing and digital museum, then introduces the new concept of "Ubiquitous Museum" which applies ubiquitous computing technologies to digital museums. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Sapporo Medical University Scholarly Communication Center is a new institution formed by a merger between the Information Center of Computer Communication and the University Library in April 2006. This Center was established for the purpose of supporting scholarly communication for SMU faculty and health care providers residing in Hokkaido. To achieve its purpose, the Center's activities include improving the campus network infrastructure, through which medical science information is exchanged, as well as maintaining the academic content system. One particularly significant project is the Center's support for the distribution of literature that had been previously carried out by the University Library, for the purpose of promoting scholarly communication. In this paper, the project supporting the distribution of literature for regional health care providers will be discussed. In addition, the PIRKA system will be summarized along with issues that remain to be resolved at the Center. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The National Diet Library (NDL) is planning to construct ‘NDL Digital Archive Portal’, which aims at navigating users to any digital information in Japan. Prior to its full-fledged operation scheduled in fiscal year 2007, we build the prototype system and have verified the functions required for integrated retrieval. This paper will show the outline of this prototype system and our portal's possible development in the future. We encourage the institutions who have digital archives to enhance their functions for Web services and make an effort to establish the portal designed for Web 2.0. Through these activities, we will achieve the connected systems among various institutions and improve the usability of digital information in Japan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Opencourseware is a free and open publication of normal course materials through the Internet, which has been originally promoted by MIT since 2001. In Japan OCW has been started since May, 2005 among six major universities, which are Keio Univ., Kyoto Univ., Tokyo Institute of Tech., Osaka Univ., Univ. of Tokyo and Waseda Univ. This April Japan Opencourseware Consortium (JOCW) has been established and Japanese OCW has been entered into the second stage. In this paper current status, some issues and perspectives are described. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Japan Oceanographic Data Center (JODC) has been carrying out the activity of oceanographic data and information exchange as National Oceanographic Data Center of Japan under the framework of International Oceanographic Data and Information Exchange (lODE) promoted by Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission of UNESCO, and is challenging an establishment of new international project for promoting lODE activity in Western Pacific area. In this paper, the trend of international project about recent oceanographic data management and the outline of data exchange by JODC are reported, and recent topics about oceanographic data are also reported. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Due to the successive emergence of corporate scandals also in Japan, following in the steps of Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) in the U.S. Financial Services Agency is going to establish Japanese version of SOX by amending Securities Exchange Law. The object of this new law is to strengthen the mechanism of internal control in companies, but as a matter of fact, it is the legal system to impose the documentation of business performance, status of internal management, decision-making process at the board of directors in companies, and to require Certified Public Accountants to review it at auditing. This paper will describe on how closely the internal control relates to records management, what kind of requirements would be needed for records management for internal control. Besides, it shall explain it as a representative example of my suggestion about the shift from "Records Management for Inside Control" to "Records Management for Accountability", that is to say, "Paradigm Shift in Records Management". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order to gather information mainly of academic resume, Tohoku University Information Database has been upgraded several times and in operation. This paper is a status report through the experience as the person in charge of operating DB within the institute and reviewing research activities. It will report; (1) introduction and evaluation of various functions of the DB based on actual practice, (2) importance of the user's role in the process of database construction, (3) the strategy and example of database construction and its operation without programming skills, vast funds and manpower, as a case example for "Information literacy in your hands (serialized in this journal)". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Japan we use so many kanji variants to describe the names of people and the names of places. Since proper nouns are out of the scope of Joyo-Kanji (daily use kanji characters in Japan), the kanji glyphs used in Jinmei-yo-Kanji (kanji for children's names in Japan) are different from the kanji glyphs used in the names of places. Unicode is less powerful to express such kanji variants since Unicode was built under the concept of "CJKV Han Unification". In this paper we study about Adobe-Japan1-6, a character code which was developed by Adobe Systems, Inc. for Japanese market, especially for handling kanji variants in Japan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Internet and PCs have been spreading in the world since the 1990s. The usage of these technologies has been expanding not only in the business field but also in the ordinary society. One of those business styles is Electronic Commerce. Most of the governments of countries and economies are taking these information technologies into their policies and developing them as their own IT policy. This paper, first, takes a general view of the IT policy progress of Japan, and describes the IT budget and the IT infrastructure. Also it mentions the ubiquitous network society and the latest market situation of electronic commerce. And last it mentions personal information protection, which is becoming one of the big issues of the IT society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Chemical Society of Japan, CSJ, launched its own electronic journal service in 2002 using the J-STAGE system. The service was provided free of charge for the last three years and the two journals got over million accesses worldwide per year in 2004. Starting in 2005 the service has switched to charged. This paper reports on the recent state of development of our journals; the number of access, effects of electronic reviewing system, and the load of online business. Problems of Japanese scholarly publication are also discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The electronic journal taskforce of the Japan Association of National University Libraries (JANUL) has established large consortia for subscribing electronic journals from 2002. There were a lot of issues to be solved when subscribing electronic journals in the national universities in Japan. The activities of the taskforce to build the consortia with large publishers were discussed in detail. The taskforce has now maintained the consortia having more than 12,000 full-text electronic journals in total. Most of the national universities have joined the consortia. The issues remained were also discussed in the paper. In order to maintain the consortia and build new ones the sustainability of the electronic taskforce of JANUL should be considered. Furthermore, new alternatives of scholarly communication should be also explored. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]