Discover scientific literature through Global Academic Focus, now accessible via Research4Life

Published: lundi 18th janvier 2021
Category: News

Do you need to do a broad literature search? Are you looking for resources from China or in Chinese? Then it’s worth trying out Global Academic Focus (GAF): an abstract database that is freely available and can be accessed through Research4Life.

GAF is owned by the China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI), a national research and information publishing organization led by Tsinghua University in Beijing. Through GAF, you can find more than 280 million articles from over 75,000 academic journals from 65 countries and regions. About two thirds are in English, another third in Chinese, but there are also resources in other languages, such as French, Spanish, Japanese and Korean. GAF covers 90% of Scopus journal content and 97% of the journals in the Science Citation Index. Note: access to the content will depend on your institution’s subscriptions or Research4Life access.

Next to journals, GAF also includes dissertations, newspapers, proceedings, yearbooks, reference works, encyclopedia, patents, laws and more.

Currently, GAF serves researchers, professors, students, and other readers from more than 1,600 institutes, 72 countries, and regions covering a variety of fields.

GAF is especially useful for people looking for resources in Chinese, as it is the world’s largest database of Chinese academic articles, with 99% of journals in China available via the platform. However, it might well be useful for users who need resources in other languages, given the broad coverage and the fact that the platform is free to use.

The platform helps users find what they need with advanced sorting and filtering functions. Moreover, you can search either in English or Chinese and will get resources for both languages without duplication.

Access GAF through Research4Life

Research4Life users can access GAF through the Hinari portal. Visit the portal and click ‘Databases for discovery’, then select ‘CNKI Global Academic Focus (GAF)’ to start searching the database.

Watch an introduction in English on the CNKI website to learn more about using the platform. The GAF team is also actively looking for feedback from its users. Feel free to share your thoughts via this form.

Hinari