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Using the CJFD Database for your Literature Search

Youxuan Wang

University of Leeds

2012-06-20

  

1. Introduction

Western scholars who study aspects of Chinese society and culture would find it desirable to consider what their Chinese colleagues have said. As journals are both one of the most widely used channels for the publication of contemporary research findings and one of the most effective platforms for intellectual debates, relevant and quality articles published in Chinese journals are important reference points as secondary sources for research projects.

 

Important as they are, the vast majority of good journal articles used to be out of reach to Western students. Subscriptions to Chinese journals made by a British university are bound to be limited for obvious reasons. Gaps in journal collections are inevitable. Even in China, no single university library holds all issues of all journals published in the country since the beginning of the 20^th century. Lack of access to the student research means a compromise in literature search for secondary sources.

 

In the age of Internet and globalisation, however, such compromise is becoming unnecessary.  In China, a number of institutions have been building online archives of electronic texts. They compete with each other in providing the service of full text data for their subscribers. One particular organisation that has been doing very well in this enterprise is Dongfang Knowledge Network, Beijing , which claims that their China Academic Journals Full Text Data (CJFD) is the most comprehensive full-text database of Chinese journals in the world. By 2012, this database has included as many as more than 9,100 journals, containing as many as more than 325,200,000 articles in PDF,  covering the whole range of intellectual disciplines in both natural and social sciences, arts and humanities. (>> Click here for background information on CAJ and CJFD - a PDF document.)

 
Now, if you have membership of a university library which is very likely a regular subscriber to CCJFD, it is not only possible to create a highly compressive bibliography of Chinese journal articles relevant to your research project, but also easy to obtain a PDF copy of the journal articles.

 

 2. How to get to the CJFD catalogue webpage?

The key issue is how to get to the webpage of the CJFD catalogue. As this page is not accessible to non-members, you can reach the CJFD catalogue only via your account with a university library which is a regular subscriber.

 

To get to the website of the online CJFD catalogue, you need to take the following four steps:

 

(1) Visit the web page of the online library catalogue of your university .

To use CJFD, we need first sign in to their database via a member library. For example, since the library of the University of Leeds is a regular subscriber to CJFD, teachers and students at Leeds can access CJFD via the University library after opening the webpage at http://lib.leeds.ac.uk. Here, you will find an online library catalogue.

 

(2) Do a key words search for "China academic journals".

On top of the list of search results, you will find a line saying "The China Academic Journals (Archive)". As this line is hyperlinked, click the link to get to the website you want to go to. (Click here for an image of the results.)

 

(3) Sign in to your university library account.

When you click the hyperlink to the archive, a page will pop up and ask you to sign in to your account with your university library. (Click here to see the webpage for signing in.)
Of course, you will have to comply with this request and type your library ID and password.

 

(4) Look for the link to CJFD

Once you've signed in, you will see a page which gives a list of databases constructed by the famous Hsinghua Tongfang CNKI. (Click here for an image of such as webpage.) 
      

Now, look for the link to CJFD which will take you to the page of online catalogue where you can start your business of literature search immediately.

 

3. How to use the CJFD?

On the technical level, using the CJFD is just as simple as looking for books in an online library catalogue. The CJFD catalogue is exactly the same as an ordinary library catalogue. Nothing is more intuitive as shown below:

 

However, there is crucial difference between literature search and an ordinary library search. In the latter, you are normally interested in a few books attributed to a particular author or relevant to a particular subject. In a literature search, however, your main purpose is to create a comprehensive bibliography of either primary or secondary sources in order to conduct a research project. When doing an ordinary library search, you will stop at obtaining the books that you want to borrow home. When doing literature search for a research project, however, you want to get a full list of every title that is relevant.

 

In order to get a full list of everything in a literature search, it is advised that you try all the four fields in the search engine so that items not found in one field may be retrieved in another:

 

 (a) author name,

 (b) title,

 (c) key words,

 (d) subject.

 

Lists generated from the CJFD catalogue are often understandably very long, sometimes with thousands of titles. This is particularly true of the topics which have been subject to debates among intellectuals throughout the country. All titles are hyperlinked to downloadable full-texts, which is the real attraction of this powerful search engine.

 

When a long list is generated, your next job is to make the list shorter and more relevant. Some of the tiles are bound to be irrelevant, as the search engine do not exercise any critical judgement when creating lists. You are supposed to make your own judgement and shorten the lists by including only those which are very relevant and useful.

 

The end product of your CJFD searches is the raw material for the compilation of a comprehensive bibliography of journal articles, an important part of the secondary sources for your research project.

As mentioned earlier, CJFD does not only help you create such a bibliography, it also enables you to get hold of a PDF copy of the articles on your bibliography.