CiNii

The NII Research Data Infrastructure (NII RDC) is an information platform that supports open science and research integrity while promoting data-driven research. It comprises three foundational components that correspond to the research data lifecycle: the data management platform (GakuNin RDM), the data publishing platform (WEKO3), and the data discovery platform (CiNii Research). Among these, GakuNin RDM and WEKO3 are developed and operated by the Research Center for Open Science and Data Platform (RCOS). Since April 2024, responsibility for the development of CiNii Research has been transferred from RCOS to the Research Center for Knowledge Media and Content Science (KMCS).

CiNii Research is an academic information search service for researchers, students, and university-affiliated individuals in Japan. It allows users to search a wide range of academic materials, including journal articles, books, doctoral dissertations, and research data. Since the launch of CiNii Articles in 2005, the service has expanded its coverage, incorporating CiNii Books in 2011 and CiNii Dissertations in 2012. In 2021, these services were unified under the comprehensive platform now known as CiNii Research.
CiNii gathers academic information from a wide array of sources. For books, it collects data from NACSIS-CAT, a union catalog and holding information database maintained by university libraries. For articles and research data, it aggregates content from platforms such as J-STAGE, institutional repositories, and the KAKEN database of Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research. This information is integrated according to a coherent set of policies  to provide users with a seamless and reliable academic search experience.