For many years, a number of academic societies in Japan have been supported through government funding. While such societies have benefited greatly from this funding, it cannot be denied that they also tend to become dependent on it. This begs the question of what should be done to ensure the independence of academic societies. Nowadays, electronic journals have developed rapidly in all parts of the world through use of the Internet. With this in mind, we—the Mammological Society of Japan, Japanese Society of Mammalian and Ova Research, Ornithological Society of Japan, Paleontological Society of Japan, and Zoological Society of Japan—are launching UniBio Press as a collection of online biological journals. We intend to make this collection available at a fair price, as we know we must find ways of making academic societies financially independent.

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[in Japanese]

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The e-Book terminal was marketed from two or more makers in 2004, and it became the center of attention. However, as compared with the result of a reference or an electronic journal, the electronization of common books was not successful. On the other hand, the web, e-mail, the cellular phone, and the blog have produced circulation of huge text. This means we have experienced not “aversion to characters” but “a character flood”. When we examine the possibility of the electronization of books, it is necessary to analyze this opposite situation and to see the characteristic as the media of books realized within cultural and social backgrounds. Then, I classified books in terms of affinity with electronization, and examined the subject of a future library.

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This article summarizes points for the sound understanding of Impact Factor as a evaluation indicator for scholarly journals. Simple use of Impact Factor as an absolute rating is futile. With a good understanding of data elements, it is recommended to use Impact Factor for relative comparison of journals akin to each other, such as those in the same category or of similar document types.

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