This article provides basic background information on the articles included in this special issue on Japanese term extraction, by (i) clarifying the basic background of research into automatic term recognition, (ii) explaining briefly the ‘contest’-style workshop organised in 1999, and (iii) briefly summarising the ATR methodologies proposed in the articles, and positioning their ideas, philosophies and methodologies within ATR from a unified perspective. Through this information, the authors intend to consolidate the contributions of the NTCIR TMREC workshop, and, hopefully, clarify a basic framework for discussion which different researchers can use to constructively communicate with each other about automatic term extraction and beyond.