Japan’s national scholarly information index.
At a Glance
| Publisher | National Institute of Informatics (NII), Japan |
| Coverage | 22M+ records — journal articles, university bulletins, books, dissertations, and research data — unified under CiNii Research |
| Access | free (much content openly linked) |
| Regional | the central discovery index for Japanese scholarship. |
Our Take
CiNii is the national gateway to Japanese research, reaching university bulletins (kiyō) and society journals that rarely surface in the commercial indexes — a crucial resource for anyone working on Japan-based scholarship, and it’s free. CiNii Research now unifies articles, data, and projects in one search. Coverage is Japan-centric and much of it is Japanese-language. Use it as the primary discovery tool for Japanese research; pair with J-STAGE for full text and OpenAlex for cross-language linking.
Power Tips
- Search CiNii for Japanese university bulletins and society journals the commercial indexes overlook, then follow links to J-STAGE for full text
- use CiNii Research to pull data and project records alongside articles in one query.
Alternatives & Complements
J-STAGE · OpenAlex · Scopus · CNKI.
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