Developmental Prospects for Scholarly Information Communication between Japan and Korea
HAN Sang-wan, Ph.D. 1)
Professor of Information Services, Dean of Research Affairs, Yonsei University1 Introduction
2 International scholarly information communication between Japan and Korea
2.1 NACSIS/ National Center for Science Information Systems
2.2 JST/ Japan Science and Technology Corporation and Technology
2.3 KINITI/ Korea Institute of Industry & Technology Information
2.4 KORDIC/ Korea Research & Development Information Center
2.5 KERIS/ Korea Education & Research Information Service
3 Developmental Prospects for Scholarly Information Communication
4 Conclusion
References1) Yonsei University, 134 Shinchon-dong, Sodaemun-gu, Seouol 120-749, Korea; Fax: +82-2-364-1991; swhan@yonsei.ac.kr The paper was delivered at 2F Conference Room in the National Center of Sciences Building on Thursday March 23rd, 2000.
Facing the new millenium, all the countries in the world, knowing full well that Internet and information technology are essential in this era, are aiming for the construction of an effective knowledge infrastructure.
Recently, knowledge and information have been recognized as resources essential to a national infrastructure. Therefore, systematic and up-to-date strategies and policies are needed to obtain rapid, specialized, and varied types of information.
Due to this circumstance, applied services such as the Information Superhighway and the Digital Library are expanding their territories and information-acquisition systems using the Internet and the Information Network now actively under the construction.
As the result of the expansion of the information infrastructure, channels of information are increasing and accessibility to information improving.
This knowledge infrastructure promotes rapid and effective scholarly information communication as well as an exchange of international scholarly resources on a common subject.
This article details the developmental prospects for scholarly information communication between Japan and Korea.
2 International scholarly information communication between Japan and Korea
2.1 NACSIS/ National Center for Science Information Systems
NACSIS has the key role in the improvement of nation-wide, collective science information system services. Its major purpose is to supply basic science information for the development of science departments in universities and the promotion of research and development in government agencies.NACSIS operates a science information network connecting universities and research institutes to improve information exchange among researchers. For this purpose, variable activities related to scholarly information communication, like the catalog information service, NACSIS-IR and NACSIS-ELS, are being executed. International communication and scholarly information exchange proceed through this science information network.
NACSIS has been providing NACSIS-IR services to government institutions and research organizations abroad since August 1993. Furthermore, numerous databases produced in NACSIS are also supplied abroad.
2.2 JST/ Japan Science and Technology Corporation and Technology
The JST has accumulated about 30 million records on science and technologies, and 22 million records in their databases.Besides, the JST operates an international technology information network with the USA and Germany.
2.3 KINITI/ Korea Institute of Industry & Technology Information
KINITI is a non-profit organization under the umbrella of the Ministry of Trade, Industry, and Energy. Its goal is to offer access to users in ways most appropriate for user needs.
KINITI has been mandated to play a role in establishing a nation-wide information dissemination system to support industrial and technological development in Korea by facilitating the access to and utilization of information resources.
KINITI collects a wide variety of information resources such as journals, monographs, R & D reports, conference proceedings, patent specifications, and so on. The current holdings of KINITI comprise 7,800 titles of serials, over 80,000 volumes of monographs, and over 9 million documents of patents. Furthermore, KINITI has developed 46 kinds of databases in the fields of science, technology and industry, and supplies 500,000 titles every year.
Especially, KISDI (the Korea Information Society Development Institute) has operated an information network connecting overseas countries to facilitate scholarly information communication, as that existing between Japan and KINITI, as follows:
<Table 1> scholarly information communication between Japan and KINITI Subscription of Japan journals in KINITI 600 titles Exchange/Contribution of journals between KINITI and JST 1,054 titles, 717 institutions KINITI provides 30 titles of journals produced in Korea to JST. These journals are offered with the translation of abstracts in Japanese, and these materials are supplied to users through the JOIS database. The titles of these journals are listed in <Appendix 1>. Journal titles published in academic societies and exchanged between KINITI and JST are also listed in <Appendix 2>.
KINITI has provided JST materials via Document Delivery Service. It also has provided dissertations in the National Diet Library by the same means. Overseas Document Delivery Service in KINITI is as follows:
<Table 2> Overseas Document Delivery Service in KINITI Country Abbreviation Name UK BLDSC The British Library Document Supply Center BPO British Patent Office (London) DERWENT Derwent Publications Ltd. (London) USA UMI University Microfilms International NTIS National Technical Information Service JCL The John Crerar Library of the University of Chicago EBSCOdoc A part of the EBSCO Information Services Group Japan JST Japan Science and Technology Corporation (Tokyo) PDC Patent Data Center, Inc. (Tokyo) NDL National Diet Library(Tokyo) Taiwan STIC Science and Technology Information Center(Taiwan) 2.4 KORDIC/ The Korea Research & Development Information Center
KORDIC is the official source sponsored and supported by MOST (the Ministry of Science & Technology) and in charge of collecting and providing scientific, technical, engineering-related information.The KORDIC collection of 2.7 million records includes:
Information is available in various formats as:
Recently, M & A between KINITI and KORDIC has been under consideration. This plan is for the efficiency in information services, that is, to avoid duplication in institutions and balance the national budget.
2.5 KERIS/ Korea Education & Research Information Service
KERIS plays a role in the progress of informatization in the education sector. It is under the umbrella of the Ministry of Education and was established in April 1999.Recently, KERIS has conducted the construction of a scholarly theses database project. This project is a part of the National Project called "Cyber Korea 21".
The purpose of this project is build an infrastructure for the efficient processing of scholarly information from creation to aquisition. Out of this process, the Portal Service System would come into existence.
Taking this into account, more convenient environment would be expected. For example, the rapid construction and update of a database having a low costing, efficient academic theses database should be possible, especially for academic societies which are in bad financial circumstances.
Besides, a full text retrieval service is also provided relative to the academic research result. Everybody can easily utilize this service, and the research process could be improved.
Other services for the actual academic research network provided by KERIS are as follows.
3 Developmental Prospects for Scholarly Information Communication
Recently, the "Millenium Project" has been going ahead in Japan with the support of the government. The goal of this project is improve the national environment focus on education informatization and bring important industries in to the new era.
According to this project, basic infrastrucure and software development, which are required for education informatization, would be effected by 2005. For such a plan as this, cooperation between government and educational institutions seems to be essential.
Major plans are as follows:
To foster national cooperation, we first have to consider the problems below:
- development of scholarly information contents
- development of scholarly information exchange methods using IT
- protection of intellectual property
- security problemsFor the activation of scholarly information exchange, a high-speed Internet environment, the digitization of research information, and the development of high-quality research sites are needed.
Therefore, the Korean government is planning Cyber Korea 21, which is to be a construct for storing and transmitting creative knowledge.
The MIC (Ministry of Information and Communication) is trying to create an environment by the year 2002 in which high-speed network services are available anytime and anywhere to the general public through the utilization of 1.5/2Mbps-level network services at reasonable prices.
Key initiatives of Cyber Korea 21 are as follows:
According to IT21 in Japan and Cyber Korea 21 in Korea, the exchange of scholarly information between related institutions such as NACSIS, JST, KINITI, KORDIC, and KERIS is very desirable.
However, more substantial mutual aid associations have to be pursued in the future. In addition, the support of IT policies, the protection of intellectual property, and security problems are also major considerations to be weighed in the pursuit of stable scholarly information communication.
KERIS homepage. http://www.keris.or.kr
KORDIC homepage. http://www.kordic.re.kr
MIC homepage. http://www.mic.go.kr
NACSIS homepage. http://www.nacsis.ac.jp
Trend Analysis of Information Policy. 1999. 10. 30. http://ncadl.nca.or.kr/data/trend<Appendix 1> Journal titles provided by KINITI to JST
(Abstracts in Japanese are included.)1. Bulletin of the Korean Chemical Society
2. Experimental and Molecular Medicine
3. Archives of Pharmacal Research
4. ETRI Journal(Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute)
5. Journal of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology
6. Metals and Materials(Seoul)
7. Journal of the Korean Society of Oceanography
8. Korean Journal of Pharmacology
9. Journal of the Korean Physical Society
10. Korean Medical Abstracts
11. Korean Scientific Abstracts
12. Korean Journal of Genetics
13. Journal of the Korean Institute of Metals and Materials
14. Journal of the Korean Institute of Communication Sciences
15. Current Bibliographies on Science and Technology. Electrical Engineering & Electronics
16. Journal of the Korean Chemical Society
17. Journal of the Korean Nuclear Society
18. Current Bibliographies on Science and Technology, Biology, Pharmacy & Food Science
19. Current Bibliographies on Science and Technology, Chemistry & Chemical Industry
20. Current Bibliographies on Science and Technology, Mechanical Engineering
21. Current Bibliographies on Science and Technology, Construction & Environmental Engineering
22. Current Bibliographies on Science and Technology, Metallurgy, Natural Resources & Energy Engineering
23. Journal of Korea Society of Automotive Engineers
24. Journal of the Pharmaceutical Society of Korea
25. Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers A
26. Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers B
27. Journal of the Korean Ceramic Society
28. Journal of the Korean Institute of Telematics and Electronics-C
29. Journal of the Korean Institute of Telematics and Electronics-D
30. Journal of the Korean Institute of Telematics and Electronics-S<Appendix 2> Journal titles published in academic societies and exchanged between KINITI and JST
1. Journal of Korean Society of Oceanography
2. Journal of the Korean Nuclear Society
3. Metals and Materials
4. Journal of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineering
5. Journal of KSNVE
6. The Magazine of the IEEK
7. Chemworld
8. Bulletin of the Korean Institute of Metals
9. Trans. of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineering.
10. Journal of the Korean Chemical Society
11. Journal of Korean Pharmacology Society
12. Journal of Information ManagementTop
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