absence of a Japanese JSTOR

[Jordan Sand]

I have heard from a Japanese editor that copyright law--or an interpretation of copyright law--makes it difficult for anyone to create a large full-text academic database like JSTOR in Japan. The editor said that to digitize and distribute back issues, the aggregator would have to seek permission from each author, which was prohibitively difficult. 

JSTAGE and Cinii are publicly-sponsored efforts to step into the breach, I think. I don't know how they handle copyright, but in my experience they rarely contain full text of articles from before their founding (I know an exception or two, so someone may correct me on this).

Jordan

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Jordan Sand
Professor of Japanese History
Georgetown University

[Sharon Domier]

Yes, Jordan you are right. In the case of Japanese journals, particularly the kiyo, authors have always retained the copyright to their articles. They didn’t sign over rights to the journal the way that North American journals requested. And so, any journal that wanted to make its articles open access had to go back and contact each author to request permission. 

I served on the editorial board of the Journal of College and University Libraries when we did that work. Unlike faculty, library staff used to be transferred to different university libraries every few years as they worked their way up the ladder. So the contact info they provided when they published was rarely still valid. We succeeded though and the articles are available in full text trough J-Stage and of course CiNii. 

More often than not the fact that you are seeing pdf files of kiyo is because the library staff pushed hard to digitize those old journals. As someone based in the States I am so very grateful for their efforts because kiyo are full of great articles for our students and they used to be practically impossible to get through interlibrary loan. And unlike JSTOR, which is so expensive and only accessible to people with academic affiliations, the push by both J-STAGE and CiNii to provide or link to as much open access as possible means that independent scholars can search and read all kinds of fabulous content. 

If you have pdf access through J-Stage and CiNii it means that the authors have signed off on their copyright to provide open access. A few have restricted access to subscribers. Otherwise, you will just see a citation and will need to request a copy through interlibrary loan. 

I see that CiNii is changing this month to look more like J-Stage. You will be able to search articles, books, grants, etc. https:// cir.nii.ac.jp 

Understanding publishing practices and copyright rules in the country we study is so important. I just wish we made time in graduate classes to cover it in depth and then had regular updates to stay on top of all the changes.

Sharon Domier

UMass Amherst 

Sent from my iPad

On Jan 20, 2022, at 5:45 PM, Jordan Sand <sa...@georgetown.edu> wrote:



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[Jordan Sand]

Just to add to Sharon's useful note: the university kiyō are a terrific resource and it has been great to see more and more kiyō articles available full-text through Cinii. I have not been using J-Stage enough recently, but a search just now revealed to my delight that the history journal Shigaku zasshi is available there full-text from 1976 forward.

Jordan

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[Travis Seifman]

Dear colleagues,

I've been following this thread with interest, and just wanted to express my thanks to Sharon for taking the time to share this informative explanation.

It certainly helps to explain, also, why many libraries (eg NDL) are so extremely strict about photocopying individuals' contributions to a larger volume. Somehow I had never quite thought about it as the authors retaining copyright, thinking about it instead on the level of policies pertaining to what portion of a work can be copied at a library, or what the extents of exceptions for research/education might be. 

Thinking of it this way - that librarians, Nii staff, others, might be just as frustrated as we are, rather than thinking of them as part of the system, taking it for granted that these are the rules - and reminding/informing us of the hard work that went into making what /is/ available available, is much appreciated.

Thanks for this. 

Cheers

Travis.

Travis Seifman

Project Researcher

UTokyo Historiographical Institute

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[kktr...@me.com]

While we are talking copyright, if you have wondered why the newspaper databases provide only images and not full html text for the period before they began to publish online and even initially not for all articles, it is again because of copyright.  Authors, such as Donald Keene often published columns in the Asahi etc., and they kept their copyright until it was routine for newspapers to be published online after which they were required to sign it away (or so I have supposed, since those signed articles are now included).

Kris

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[Nobumi Iyanaga]

Dear Colleagues,

A great advantage of Japanese Cinii/JStage compared to JStore that seems not mentioned so far, is that it is fully open to everybody. As I am not affiliated to any institution, JStore and other American/European database are only frustrating for me...

Best regards,

Nobumi Iyanaga

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[Silvio Vita]

Dear all,

I agree with Nobumi. JStore limits the range of users to those who have an affiliation with an institution that can afford the subscription. From this point of view, once fully implemented (slowly, it seems) Cinii/JStage would be a far better resource.

Portail Persée in France has the same advantage for French academic publications, by the way.

Silvio Vita

[Lisa Kochinski]

Dear Colleagues,

Many thanks to Silvio Vita for mentioning Portail Persée. This is an extremely useful site. In particular, I rely on Portail Persée to browse the contents of Cahiers d'Extrême-Asie. The reviews of recent Japanese publications on Japanese medieval religion, translated by Steven Trenson and Iyanaga Nobumi, help me to stay up to date and to decide which books to order from Japan. 

Does anyone know of similar sites in other languages, for example in Italian?

Best regards,

Lisa Kochinski

PhD Candidate (ABD)

School of Religion, University of Southern California

http://dornsife.usc.edu/religion/

https://usc.academia.edu/LisaKochinski

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