Message by the President

The first issue of “Igaku Chuo Zashi, namely Ichushi” was published 122 years ago in 1903. Coincidentally, the Wright Brothers succeeded in mankind's first powered flight in the same year.

For nearly 100 years since its first issue, the journal has been published in Japanese to introduce abstracts of medical literature published in Japan, but in 2000, it was transferred to the Internet as “Ichushi-Web” and “Ichushi Personal-Web” and is now being distributed on the Internet. This year marks the 25th year of these web service.

All volumes since the first issue have been delivered to the National Diet Library and are now available to the public as the “Ichushi Archive”. Old analog data from the print era published before the digitalization as the “Ichushi-Web” was converted to digital data through the “OLD Ichushi Project”, which started in 2010. This work was completed in 2023, and currently 16,473,254 data in all volumes are searchable on the “Ichushi-Web” and “Ichushi Personal-Web,” of which 3,577,980 are from the “OLD Ichushi data”.

In order to select the appropriate one that the user needs from this huge amount of data, a search is conducted. Many people start a new research project with a great idea, but when they have finished their research and are ready to write a paper, they often find that a research paper has already been reported on the same topic. A literature search should be done before starting research, and the “Ichushi-Web” and “Ichushi Personal-Web” are excellent databases for searching research results and trends reported in Japan to date. It is desirable to narrow down your search from the first dozen or so results presented according to your own theme, but “Ichushi-Web” and “Ichushi Personal-Web” have already introduced a “YURUFUWA Search (Fuzzy search)”in terms of search, and we will make every effort to develop a search method using AI technology to make your search simple and to the point.

“Ichushi-Web” is mainly targeted at corporations and other organizations, but there is also ”Ichushi Personal-Web" for individual users. This service can be subscribed to on a monthly basis, and we recommend its wide use by individual researchers as a source of information for their research.

Apr. 16, 2025
SEYAMA Yosuke, M.D., Ph.D.