Japan Link Center (JaLC): link management and DOl assignment for Japanese electronic scholarly contents.

JST, cooperated with several national institutes, is currently developing "Japan Link Center", which manages Japanese electronic scholarly contents (journal articles, books, dissertations etc.) in an integrated fashion using Digital Object Identifier (DOI). Japan Link Center will manage metadata and whereabouts information of the contents in the digital environment and provide domestic and international linking information, citing/cited information to activate dissemination of S&T information, furthermore, to strengthen transmission of S&T information from Japan. Japan Link Center is expected to be appointed as the 9th DOI registration agency (RA) in the world by the International DOI Foundation (IDF) this spring. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]