| CiNii | |
| Producer: | National Institute of Informatics |
| Country: | Japan |
| History: | April 2005–present |
| Languages: | Japanese, English |
| Cost: | Free; Subscription for full-text |
| Disciplines: | Multidisciplinary |
| Depth: | Index, abstract & full-text |
| Formats: | Journal articles and books |
| Temporal: | 1906–present |
| Geospatial: | Japan |
| Number: | 22 million |
CiNii is a bibliographic database service for material in Japanese academic libraries, especially focusing on Japanese works and English works published in Japan. An early trial version of the database was a component of its predecessor called GeNii, [1] available online at least since June 2002.[2] 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 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).
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.
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 is DA00432173 for books and 9000002393144 for journal articles.