Behind the "Discontinuation of the Chinese Academy of Sciences": HowNet in the Whirlpool of Controversy
After more than 20 years of development, the CNKI database has become one of the important targets for colleges and universities to purchase;
HowNet was once again pushed to the forefront of public opinion.
On April 8, a screenshot of an email from the Documentation and Information Center of the Chinese Academy of Sciences was circulated on the Internet, saying that "Tongfang Knowledge Network Technology Co., Ltd. (CNKI database publisher) suspends the use of the CNKI database by the Chinese Academy of Sciences. From now on, CNKI scientific and technological journals The database of Hebo master's thesis cannot be downloaded." On April 18, a staff member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences confirmed to the Beijing News reporter that the screenshot email was true.
In the past 20 years, CNKI database has developed into one of the important targets for the procurement of major university libraries and research institutions. However, in recent years, CNKI has experienced frictions with many academic institutions and universities.
A reporter from the Beijing News found that in the past ten years, 6 colleges and universities have announced the suspension of CNKI due to the high increase in renewal fees, including Peking University, Wuhan University of Technology, Nanjing Normal University and other universities.
According to relevant data from media reports, CNKI has a market share of nearly 100% in colleges and universities, and a share of more than 60% in other major markets.
CNKI has more than 60 million documents, and the index rate of core journals is 99%.
Zhu Jian, who used to be the executive editor of the Journal of Nanjing University, pointed out that the large-scale database created by CNKI has collected academic documents and journals with dissemination value, and carried out digital publishing and dissemination, which has successfully changed the basics of academic dissemination. It has greatly improved the efficiency of academic communication, and its literature value is beyond doubt.
A number of experts and scholars expressed the hope that this event will cause society, academia and business organizations to reflect on the business operation model of databases, as well as the regulation of data services by relevant departments.
The Chinese Academy of Sciences adjusts the database cooperation model such as CNKI
On the morning of April 19, reporters from the Beijing News learned from various sources that some research institutes of the Chinese Academy of Sciences notified students in emails that due to the continuous increase in the price of CNKI database (China Knowledge Network), the cost of opening up all staff has reached nearly 10 million yuan. The Documentation and Information Center decided. , the college-level funds are fully ordered, and the Wanfang database has been newly opened for the entire college. It cooperates with the VIP database that has been ordered and opened for the entire college to ensure the general demand for Chinese journals and Chinese dissertations throughout the college.
The Chinese Academy of Sciences has opened Wanfang database and VIP database for the whole academy; the access to the CNKI database will last until April 20.
According to the relevant education business website of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, as of April 19, the Chinese database of the Chinese Academy of Sciences has a total of 14 databases, including CNKI China Knowledge Network.
In response to the fact that the Chinese Academy of Sciences is about to suspend the CNKI, a student of the Chinese Academy of Sciences told the Beijing News reporter that in the evening class on April 18, a teacher of the Chinese Academy of Sciences once organized a class discussion. He also said that CNKI's gross profit margin is too high, and the actual income to the author is less.
According to reports, on April 18, the hospital encountered the phenomenon of instability in the download article service of CNKI, and it did not resume the download function until the 19th.
Previously, on April 8, the Documentation and Information Center issued the "Notice on CNKI's Science and Technology Journals and the Database of Master's and Doctoral Dissertations Cannot Be Downloaded Normally".
The "Notice" shows that in 2022, the Documentation and Information Center of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Tongfang Knowledge Network (Beijing) Technology Co., Ltd. will actively discuss the cost and ordering model, but after many rounds of arduous negotiations, CNKI database still insists on the renewal fee of nearly 10 million yuan , the group group plan it gives is quite harsh in terms of the number of members and the price of a single family.
Since then, a reporter from the Beijing News called the Documentation and Information Center of the Chinese Academy of Sciences on this matter. The operator said that the Chinese Academy of Sciences will no longer respond to the suspension of HowNet.
On the afternoon of April 19, CNKI released the "Explanation" stating that in 2022, the Documentation and Information Center of the Chinese Academy of Sciences will adjust the procurement model of some domestic and foreign databases, including the CNKI database, from a unified centralized procurement model to a demand hospital. The joint procurement model of the group.
After friendly negotiation, the work of adjusting the ordering mode of CNKI database is progressing in an orderly manner. Each institute will choose the ordering content. It is planned to complete the group work, sign the agreement and start the 2022 annual service in the near future.
According to public information, in 1999, CNKI's predecessor, "China Journal Network", was initiated by Tsinghua University and Tsinghua Tongfang, and was supported by many national departments.
The content construction of CNKI is undertaken by China Academic Journals (CD-ROM Edition) Electronic Magazine Co., Ltd., and the technology and services are undertaken by Tongfang CNKI (Beijing) Technology Co., Ltd.
China Academic Journals (CD-ROM Edition) Electronic Magazine is the first batch of approved by the former State Press and Publication Administration, in charge of the Ministry of Education, and sponsored by Tsinghua University. It is the largest and oldest professional Internet and electronic publishing institution in China.
Accused purchase pricing has risen year after year
In many media reports, CNKI, as a market-oriented commercial organization, has the advantage of pricing power due to the particularity of its products and services.
A reporter from the Beijing News found that in the past 10 years, 6 universities, including Peking University, Wuhan University of Technology, Nanjing Normal University, etc., have successively announced the suspension of CNKI due to the high increase in renewal fees.
In December 2013 and January 2016, Wuhan University of Technology announced the suspension of the use of CNKI database of CNKI twice.
The school library has publicly stated that during the period from 2010 to 2016, the price increase of CNKI exceeded 132.86%, with an average annual increase of 18.98%.
The increase in the purchase price of CNKI has also been confirmed by relevant universities.
Mr. Hong, head of the Academic Affairs Office of a university in Beijing, mentioned that the purchase price of CNKI database is rising every year.
"Our school's CNKI purchase price is more than 1 million, with an annual increase of 5% to 10%. This year's quotation has increased by 150,000 compared with last year." He said.
According to the procurement transaction announcement of Xiamen University's "China Knowledge Network" database disclosed on the official website of Xiamen University Bidding Center, the transaction value of the project in 2019 was 730,000 yuan; in 2020, the transaction value was 740,000 yuan; in 2022, the transaction value was 851,000 yuan .
"I asked the school library specifically, can I buy some magazines and data on HowNet? The library replied that I couldn't afford it at all, it was too expensive." Chen Zhe, deputy dean of a university law school in Beijing (pseudonym) said.
In addition, the reporter noticed that the prices of HowNet database resources purchased by universities are not the same, ranging from hundreds of thousands to millions.
According to the Guangzhou University Library's 2022 "Announcement of Single-Source Purchasing of Electronic Resources (Chinese Library) Procurement", the total price of CNKI on CNKI is 1.1 million yuan; the announcement issued by Southwest University of Political Science and Law shows that CNKI Database (CNKI) 2022-2023 The budgeted amount of goods or services to be purchased in the procurement project is 1.7 million yuan; Renmin University of China's "2021 Chinese Database Renewal Project (2)-CNKI General Database Transaction Announcement" shows that the winning bid (( The transaction) amounted to RMB 1.6479 million.
"It's like ordering food in a restaurant, CNKI provides a menu, and the buyer tick the box as needed." Yao Guozhang, a professor at the School of Management of Nanjing University of Posts and Telecommunications, explained CNKI's charging model, saying: CNKI provides multiple different sub-databases, and the more disciplines there are. , the more sub-databases to be purchased, the higher the price; in addition, the price is related to the number of users and downloads of the buyer.
Therefore, the purchase price of each unit is different.
Mr. Yan, a staff member of a double-first-class university library in Jiangsu Province, told the Beijing News reporter that the price of CNKI resources is also related to the capacity of concurrent users.
"Sometimes I can't log in because the number of people logged in at the same time has reached the limit. There must be a difference in the price of allowing 100 people to access at the same time and allowing 10,000 people to access at the same time. Therefore, the price is also related to the size of the school."
Mr. Yan has visited CNKI.
"HowNet actually digitizes the paper data with OCR recognition (character recognition), and also compiles systematic indexing and intelligent search processing, all of which will be included in the cost. Moreover, new data is added every year. , so the price goes up.”
An employee who used to work at CNKI revealed to a reporter from the Beijing News that academic journal products for universities and libraries are still the main source of profit for CNKI, and it is also the top priority of sales.
Regarding the reason for the price increase, the employee said that labor costs are CNKI's biggest expense and one of the reasons for the price increase.
He said that CNKI has always adopted piece-rate pay to pay wages, which has increased the cost of its internal operations, while procurement pricing is adjusted according to internal costs.
"With such a large amount of literature, relying on people to make products will naturally lead to high labor costs."
"Few academic institutions can bypass CNKI"
In fact, most colleges and universities continued to cooperate with CNKI after a period of inactivity, which ended in compromise.
The above-mentioned teacher Hong explained the true state of the academic circle: "On the one hand, researchers cannot do without CNKI, and on the other hand, they are very anti-Sensor.com's 'continuous price increase' behavior, which leads to compromise while resenting."
It is understood that after more than 20 years of development, the CNKI database has become one of the important targets for the procurement of major university libraries and research institutions, and it is also an important way for academic researchers and students to access literature.
The above-mentioned head of the Academic Affairs Office of a university in Beijing, Mr. Hong, pointed out the importance of databases to academic researchers: "Doing academic research is inseparable from understanding literature papers, and you can't do research without reading literature materials."
The data capacity of CNKI is clearly given in the "Single Source Procurement Announcement of China National Knowledge Infrastructure (2022) Project" issued by Zhejiang Security Vocational and Technical College.
Taking one of CNKI's sub-databases, "China Academic Journals (Online Edition)" as an example, as of January 20, 2022, more than 8,540 journals have been included, with a total of more than 60 million full-text documents.
Among them, more than 1970 core journals are included.
The integrity rate of core journals and important evaluative database source journals is higher than 95%; the integrity rate of other academic journals is higher than 93%.
The completeness rate of the literature collection period is higher than 99%.
The collection period is from 1915 to the present.
In addition, CNKI's "Chinese Doctoral Dissertation Full-text Database" covers basic sciences, engineering technology, agriculture, medicine, philosophy, humanities, social sciences and other fields. As of January 20, 2022, more than 481,000 doctoral dissertations have been collected. .
Among them, 241 training units have exclusive cooperation with CNKI; "China Excellent Master's Degree Thesis Full-text Database" covers basic science, engineering technology, agriculture, medicine, philosophy, humanities, social sciences and other fields. As of January 20, 2022, More than 4.806 million master's thesis are collected.
Among them, 464 training units cooperate exclusively with CNKI.
In addition to the huge amount of data, CNKI's convenience in retrieval and download has also been affirmed.
Mr. Hong said that in addition to including the content, CNKI will also organize and process the content, including classifying and marking it, and supporting various retrieval methods such as keywords, film titles, authors, full texts, and reference documents, which can realize "one-stop". search".
"I am a heavy user of HowNet, and there should be many people like me." The above-mentioned teacher Yan pointed out, "tens of thousands of students and teachers in the school do scientific research and do papers. You can only repurchase, it is impossible to break, break. what to do?"
"Few domestic universities and research institutions can bypass CNKI." Some respondents said.
Compared with the latecomers VIP Consulting and Wanfang Data, which have hundreds of exclusive journals, CNKI has a significant intellectual property advantage, and the number and quality of exclusive journals included are far higher than other operators in the same field.
According to several media reports, CNKI has a 100% market share in colleges and universities, and more than 60% in other major markets.
CNKI has more than 60 million documents, and the index rate of core journals is 99%.
Today, CNKI has formed a unique business model and a dominant market situation, and it is difficult for users to break the long-term usage habits in a short period of time.
Public gross profit margin exceeds 50%
According to the 2020 annual report released by Tongfang Co., Ltd., Tongfang Knowledge Network’s main business revenue exceeded 1.1 billion yuan in that year, its net profit exceeded 190 million yuan, and its gross profit margin reached 53.93%.
In the first half of 2021, Tongfang HowNet's main business revenue was about 496 million yuan, the net profit attributable to shareholders of the parent company was about 18.93 million yuan, and the gross profit margin was 51.3%.
Several industry insiders pointed out that CNKI has a business model of "buy low and sell high".
A former employee of CNKI's Shanxi branch said that CNKI is a copyright trading platform that distributes royalties through the platform. The main revenue distribution participants include authors, CNKI, publishers and network service providers.
The former employee revealed to a reporter from the Beijing News that, based on years of experience, the most profitable way to package and sell database resources to academic institutions is the “road”.
He likened the products in HowNet to "commodities in a large supermarket", and the commodities will be classified according to general disciplines. "Whatever users need, they will go to wholesale. Only when they are sold in large quantities to large enterprises and academic institutions can they taste the sweetness. ."
However, several university faculty members confirmed that the sources of academic articles in CNKI are mostly journal articles and university doctoral and master theses.
Once a paper is published in a journal, the editorial department of the journal will obtain the copyright of the article, and CNKI and the editorial department will obtain the copyright for database publishing accordingly. Therefore, no matter how many articles an author has included in CNKI and how many clicks, the income generated will be The author "doesn't get a penny".
CNKI did not pay the necessary copyright fees to the authors of the papers while charging high fees for the "customers".
According to several media reports, when a doctoral dissertation and a master's thesis are published on CNKI, the author can only receive a maximum of 100 yuan in cash and a search card with a face value of 400 yuan as remuneration. A fee of $15-25 will be charged.
After calculation, a doctoral dissertation purchased for 100 yuan can earn more than 100,000 yuan just by downloading CNKI.
In December 2021, Zhao Dexin, a ninety-nine professor of Zhongnan University of Economics and Law, publicly accused CNKI of collecting more than 100 of his papers without authorization and charging users, which attracted widespread public attention.
According to Zhao Dexin, after his paper was included, not only did he not get a penny of the manuscript fee, but he also had to pay CNKI to download it himself.
Zhao Dexin chose to go to court with HowNet.
In the end, Zhao Dexin won the case, her paper was removed from the shelves and a total of more than 700,000 yuan was awarded.
Afterwards, CNKI issued a public statement to apologize to Professor Zhao Dexin, and stated that it would actively communicate with Professor Zhao Dexin in conjunction with the editing and publishing units of relevant journals, and properly handle the problem that Professor Zhao Dexin's works continued to be disseminated on the CNKI platform.
But so far, more than 100 papers by Zhao Dexin have not been put on the shelves again.
The above-mentioned former employees who worked in the Shanxi branch of CNKI confirmed to the Beijing News reporter that CNKI can become an indispensable "database" for major universities, mainly because it relies on unique and diverse data resources, and behind the massive data , the cost paid by CNKI is not high.
The former employee further explained that if undergraduates and postgraduates want to graduate, they must upload their dissertations to CNKI and check them for duplicates. CNKI, as the only academic electronic journal unit in my country that can officially publish doctoral dissertations approved by the state, publishes doctoral dissertations in various journals. Academic institutions are highly recognized.
Over time, the inclusion of papers on CNKI becomes a kind of "recognition". The more people upload their papers, the more comprehensive the data constructed on CNKI will be.
Under such a business model, Tongfang HowNet has gradually become a company with an annual revenue of billions.
■ follow up
Is HowNet suspected of a monopoly?
Wu Chen, director of Beijing Chenzhang Law Firm and vice-chairman of the Beijing Civic and Commercial Law Research Association, said in an interview with a reporter from the Beijing News that the price issue of HowNet has always been the focus of discussion, and for the same product, there is a capable joint negotiation. , those who are incapable can only accept the price unilaterally determined by CNKI.
In fact, from the point of view of this behavior itself, it has been suspected of violating the relevant provisions of the anti-monopoly law, which belongs to the differential treatment of different users.
Because universities and scientific research units have difficulty in bargaining with CNKI, discussions about the "HowNet monopoly" are constantly being brought up.
At the National Two Sessions in 2022, a number of representatives also spoke out on this issue.
But the identification of "monopoly" behavior in the sense of anti-monopoly law is complicated.
Sun Jin, a professor at the Law School of Wuhan University, said in an interview with Changjiang Daily that only anti-monopoly law enforcement agencies or judicial authorities can determine whether CNKI constitutes a monopoly.
Law enforcement or judicial authorities have to follow three steps when determining: the first step is to define the relevant market; the second step is to determine whether it has a dominant market position; the third step is to determine whether it has abused its dominant market position.
Regarding the question of whether CNKI is suspected of monopoly, on March 9, the Anti-monopoly Division I of the State Administration for Market Regulation said in response to a message from a media reporter: "The State Administration for Market Regulation is verifying and researching."
How to get out of the "HowNet Mode"?
On April 18, UNESCO’s official Weibo post said that “Chinese Academy of Sciences will replace CNKI with Wanfang and VIP,” saying, “We call for open science, including: more open, transparent, collaborative and inclusive scientific practices, and Scientific knowledge that is more accessible, verifiable, and subject to scrutiny and critique. Scientists and engineers can use open licenses to more widely share their writings, data, software, and even hardware, thereby fostering scientific collaboration and advancing science.”
Gao Peijie, a lawyer from Beijing Jingshi Law Firm, told reporters that the CNKI model forms a closed loop of publication and dissemination in business operations, which limits the transformation of domestic scientific and technological achievements to a certain extent and is not conducive to the market-oriented development of intellectual property rights.
He believes that market regulators should regulate CNKI's commercial transactions, and relevant departments should further liberalize the online publishing service license of domestic electronic academic platforms.
At the same time, market regulators should regulate the publication and distribution of academic journal companies, and should not force copyright owners to "bundle" authorization. Academic journal companies should further explain the authorized content and the results to the copyright owner.
"While giving full play to the market supervision mechanism, the authors' legal awareness and related rights will be further improved. Through the market-oriented supply and demand relationship between readers and authors, the sustainable development of the intellectual property platform will be promoted," said Gao Peijie.
Xiong Wenchong, an associate professor at the Law School of Minzu University of China, advocates using the principles and rules of civil law and copyright law to solve such problems.
"The key remains at the source, namely whether the paper journal has legally and effectively obtained the exclusive and exclusive right to use and sublicense the work from the author of the paper."
Wu Chen said that the key to breaking the situation is to bring academic data back into the scope of public market resources, so as to break the private monopoly formed by platforms such as CNKI for these resources that should be public based on intellectual property rights.
Yao Guozhang, a professor at the School of Management of Nanjing University of Posts and Telecommunications, believes that databases should adhere to public welfare.
"Public welfare positioning is not free of charge, but priced at cost, or paid by the government as a public basic resource." He pointed out that CNKI can find other profit models, such as expanding the international market, conducting document translation, outputting academic achievements, etc., and Provide some value-added services to generate revenue.
In the opinion of Zhang Yang (pseudonym), a professor at a university in Beijing, the CNKI database should be invested more by the state as a public product of scientific research, covering the operating costs of enterprises, and should not make high profits from the knowledge innovation of scholars.
Databases should be of semi-public nature and run under the supervision of relevant state departments to prevent similar databases from forming barriers to knowledge dissemination and hindering knowledge dissemination and innovation.
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