When will public knowledge resources return to the public welfare attribute
2021-12-16
Recently, after eight years of rights protection, Zhao Dexin, a retired professor at Zhongnan University of economics and law in his late nineties, finally waited for an apology from China HowNet and more than 700000 yuan in compensation. Since 2013, Zhao Dexin has sued China HowNet for infringing the right to network communication of his works, and all won the lawsuit. HowNet collects scientific researchers' academic papers at low prices or even free of charge. There has always been a dispute over the paid use and continuous increase of prices by scientific research institutions and college teachers and students. "The 700000 yuan compensation to Professor Zhao Dexin is the copyright infringement liability of HowNet, which belongs to the nature of compensation for losses." Cong Lixian, Dean of Intellectual Property School of East China University of political science and law, said that from the court's judgment, it is an infringement for HowNet to collect a large number of academic papers and make profits without the author's permission or with license defects. Generally, the copyright of these papers within the copyright protection period still belongs to the author himself. At present, the incident has caused a chain reaction. Professor Zhao Dexin's student Su Shaozhi has also won a lawsuit with HowNet. However, the reporter contacted a number of experts and scholars, who were strongly dissatisfied with such behavior of HowNet. "Those who need papers have to pay for downloading, and the author can't get a penny", but they all refused to accept further interviews. A young scholar told reporters: "for us, if we can't get on the knowledge network because of safeguarding our rights, we will face great losses academically." Duplication checking opportunities are "clearly priced" on the Internet, and the burden on students has increased sharply In recent years, all kinds of schools at all levels have strict requirements for paper duplication checking, and the demand for paper duplication checking function has soared among graduates. Compared with VIP consulting, Wanfang Data and other platforms, the academic papers included in HowNet have significant advantages in quantity and type, and the exclusive journals included in HowNet far exceed other platforms in the same field in terms of discipline coverage and paper quality. According to the author's statistics, the HowNet Full-text Journal Database contains 3964 exclusive and only authorized journals, accounting for 43% of the total number of journals in China; Among them, there are 778 kinds of core journals, accounting for about 42% of all core journals; It contains 194 journals ranking the top three in various disciplines, accounting for 64% of the total number of the top three journals. Therefore, many colleges and universities require the duplicate inspection results of HowNet to prevail. At present, colleges and universities generally provide students with two HowNet duplicate inspections free of charge, one is the initial inspection, and the second is the professional inspection, that is, the final inspection. After using up the free paper duplication opportunities provided by the school, many students are willing to spend money to buy more paper duplication services. 168 yuan at a time and 760 yuan at a time. After spending nearly 1000 yuan on the paper duplication inspection service, Zhang Yiling, a college graduate in Hunan Province, was "relieved" to submit the final version of her graduation thesis to the school. The duplication inspection result was close to the final result of the school duplication inspection, which was 5.1%. If the money was used for meals, she could eat in the canteen for more than a month. For the query about the high fees reflected by students, HowNet has repeatedly issued a notice saying that the duplicate check function has never been opened to individual users, and only institutional users such as universities and scientific research institutions have this right. In April 2020, HowNet issued a notice stating that "criminals are increasingly using technical means to steal or obtain detection accounts through illegal means, and selling HowNet academic misconduct detection services to individuals through the network for profit", Penalty measures such as "for those who disclose or resell due to poor management, the annual package service mode will be cancelled and the annual service quantity will be re verified". On the eve of this year's graduation season, the cost of duplicate checking on the network platform has increased again, making it "unacceptable" for graduates. The reporter found on an e-commerce platform that businesses claimed that the price of paper duplication checking based on HowNet showed an upward trend, and the higher the price, the more complete the database content behind it, and even the quotation of 1800 yuan and 2000 yuan. In addition, in order to ensure that papers do not encounter problems in the repetition rate, some e-commerce platforms have also derived "weight reduction" services to help authors reduce the repetition rate of papers. Jingyi, an undergraduate graduate of a university in Nanchang, purchased weight checking and artificial intelligence "weight reduction" services on an e-commerce platform, spent 1500 yuan and got "papers lower than the repetition rate limit specified by the University" within five days. For an undergraduate thesis with a full text of about 23000 words and a repetition rate of nearly 30%, businesses providing weight inspection and "weight reduction" services replied to reporters, "reduce it to less than 15%, charge 530 yuan, reduce it to less than 10%, and sell it for 660 yuan. Feed back within 2 days and adopt China HowNet system". The merchant introduced to reduce the repetition rate to ensure that the general idea, academic views, content framework and structure of the article remain unchanged, the sentence logic is smooth, and the content will not be added or deleted. "We will find the corresponding professional modification teacher to reduce the repetition rate and ensure the professionalism of the article by changing the expression mode". "Weight checking opportunities are traded as commodities, and also derive 'weight reduction' services, which seriously destroys academic norms and academic ecology." Li Yu, a scholar of Humanities and Social Sciences in a central university, said. On the one hand, HowNet clearly stipulates that duplicate checking services are not open to individuals. On the other hand, students have duplicate checking needs. Why can't schools provide students with multiple duplicate checking opportunities? "The school provides free duplicate checking opportunities to warn students not to plagiarize, not to help students escape the monitoring of plagiarism." Li Yu explained the school's considerations. So far, HowNet and the school have their own reasons, but they have pushed the demand for duplicate examination of some graduates' papers into the market. The continuous price rise of HowNet is unbearable for colleges and universities Previously, many colleges and universities raised questions about the high price and rising price of HowNet services. In January 2016, Wuhan University of Technology said that the university would suspend the use of HowNet because the renewal price was too high and the quotation was rising every year. From 2010 to 2016, the usage fee of HowNet increased by about 132%, with an average annual increase of about 19%, and "the university can't afford it". Because of the sharp rise in the price of renewing HowNet, "the university can not reach an agreement with HowNet on the renewal price", Peking University and Taiyuan University of technology also issued a notice about stopping HowNet. This storm has also affected many colleges and universities in Hebei, Shandong, Yunnan and other places. According to the reporter, these colleges and universities concerned soon re ordered HowNet services, but this does not mean that the relevant problems have been properly solved. "Students and teachers should use it. HowNet is the only one, and we are forced to have no choice." The person in charge of the above-mentioned University Library told reporters. In the tug of war with colleges and universities, HowNet has raised the price, and the direct and indirect costs borne by colleges and universities, teachers and students are becoming higher and higher. A former person in charge of a Beijing University Library told reporters, "the university has increased the HowNet by hundreds of thousands every year, which has exceeded 800000 yuan this year, rising every year, exceeding the bearing range". The resources of university libraries are mainly divided into paper books and periodicals, Chinese and foreign language databases. "The purchase of HowNet accounts for more than one third of the purchase funds of Chinese databases, which can only reduce the purchase of other sub databases". "Compared with market monopoly, knowledge monopoly is more vigilant" Because of the contract signed with colleges and universities, teachers and students in Colleges and universities can use HowNet to download papers for free. But for social users, they need to pay for downloading. At present, downloading journal papers on HowNet is about 0.5 yuan a page. Master's thesis 15 yuan / piece, doctoral thesis 30 yuan / piece. According to the report of the people's Political Consultative Conference, Ni Minjing, member of the National Committee of the Chinese people's Political Consultative Conference and deputy director of the Shanghai Municipal Education Commission, once submitted a proposal during the two sessions in 2020, believing that CNKI has basically completed the integration and integration of large-scale knowledge and information resources, built an Internet dissemination and value-added service platform for knowledge resources, and has become a platform to provide resource sharing and value-added services for the whole society As the leader of digital learning, knowledge innovation and information services, it is easy to absorb high profits through monopoly, resulting in the continuous growth of knowledge acquisition cost. Therefore, he suggested that China HowNet should be included in the scope of services purchased by the government. More than 20 years ago, HowNet built "CNKI digital library" with the strong support of the state, and its official website icon shows it as "China knowledge infrastructure project". At the end of 2018, its holding company Tongfang shares announced that Tsinghua holdings planned to transfer all its Tongfang holding shares to CNNC capital, and CNNC capital became the controlling shareholder of the company. According to the financial report of Tongfang shares, in the first half of 2021, the company's main business income was 496 million yuan, the net profit attributable to the parent was 18.927 million yuan, and the gross profit margin was 51.30%. The periodical papers, dissertations, conference papers and other resources collected and stored by HowNet directly come from universities, scientific research institutes and their scholars and students. As public goods, these academic documents have public welfare attributes, but HowNet's business operation model based on them has always been questioned. "In essence, China HowNet builds a public knowledge database, but now the public welfare attribute is getting weaker and weaker, and the commercial flavor is getting stronger and stronger." Cong Lixian said that at present, the pricing mechanism of HowNet is opaque, and the main revenue still comes from copyright revenue. Although there are costs in technology construction and website operation, should they be charged? How is the charge reasonable? Our reporter sent an interview letter to its marketing department through the official website of HowNet on whether to pay the author for the papers included in HowNet and how to formulate the charging standard. As of press time, no response has been received. "The products provided by academic databases are different from general commodities. Once the copyright resources of academic documents form a monopoly and the mode of supply is single, the abuse of market dominance by operators relying on this monopoly advantage will do great harm." Sun Jin, director of the competition law and Policy Research Center of Wuhan University and professor of the law school, reminded, "but compared with market monopoly, knowledge monopoly is more vigilant." In Sun Jin's view, in order to maximize profits, academic database operators raise prices, which not only damages public knowledge resources, but also raises the audience threshold of these journals, making knowledge unable to spread widely and easier to form a "knowledge monopoly". Some scholars told reporters that the knowledge resources collected by HowNet come from the society, and their resources have significant sociality. They should not simply take the resources from the society as their basis for making huge profits, but should "take them from the society and use them in the society", and adhere to the universality and public welfare of services. Therefore, as a national knowledge infrastructure, the services provided by HowNet should be oriented to the public, meet the public's demand for knowledge and provide equal services. In 2012, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences established the national philosophy and Social Sciences Database to promote the public welfare use and open sharing of academic resources. Excellent Journals funded by the National Social Sciences Foundation are open access and free access here. Li Yu said frankly: "at present, the influence is limited, because there are not many journals included, and there is a bottleneck in the gathering of resources." "In foreign countries, many databases are funded by public welfare associations or the government, and the research results should also be obtained by taxpayers free of charge." Li Yu said, "from this point of view, the government should strengthen policy support and financial support, take effective market intervention and guidance, actively explore open access mode, and remove barriers to scientific research and knowledge sharing to the greatest extent, so as to stimulate more academic innovation." (outlook new era)
Edit：Yuanqi Tang Responsible editor：Xiao Yu
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