Bottom HowNet: making a lot of academic money? Academic foxconn? Knowledge engineering of positioning deviation?
2021-12-21
The "business classics" of China HowNet are well known overnight. The reason is that Zhao Dexin, an 89 year old retired professor of Zhongnan University of economics and law, made a "complaint" against HowNet. Since 2013, Zhao Dexin has sued HowNet for several times on the ground that her work information network communication right has been infringed. After winning all the lawsuits, she has received more than 700000 yuan in compensation. On December 10, HowNet released the explanation on issues related to "Professor Zhao Dexin's lawsuit against China HowNet for compensation", and related topics were on the hot search, with 380 million readings. For the apology, Zhao Dexin responded: I hope HowNet can come up with specific rectification measures and really show sincerity to solve the problem, rather than staying on the surface. Indeed, some problems still need to be solved. For example, despite winning the lawsuit, Zhao Dexin's paper was taken off the shelves by the HowNet. There are also some complaints on the Internet that the HowNet charges expensive and the service fee increases year after year. China HowNet was born in 1995 and has a history of 26 years so far. It has come from the era of paper publishing. Although it does network business, it is older than most Internet companies. With the popularization of higher education, the influence of HowNet is more extensive. Few college students today "don't hear" HowNet like Zhai Tianlin. This makes it burdened with multiple identity conflicts. A company founded on national policies has grown through commercialization. At present, it is facing the dual responsibility of business logic and academic rules, and even trapped in the deep network of public opinion. Through various interviews, the reporter of it times tried to restore the triple identity of HowNet. 01 University thesis database of "borrowing chicken to lay eggs"? After the unauthorized collection of Professor jiuxun's papers provoked a lawsuit, some young scholars questioned their infringement. "More than 100 of my articles have been included by China HowNet without consent. If I don't sue, will I be infringed all the time?" Wuhan young scholar major openly questioned. On December 17, HowNet replied: "in the research scheme, it can not be solved in a day or two. We are busy to zero every day." In recent years, almost all colleges and universities in China have uploaded students' Graduation Theses to HowNet by default, covering undergraduate, master's and doctoral theses. The huge number of uploads every year makes HowNet the largest and most comprehensive database of master's and doctoral theses on Chinese subjects in China. In this regard, one allegation is "borrowing chicken to lay eggs". After the academic papers are entered into the paper library, HowNet gains a lot of income by paying for reading, which makes it fall into the dispute of making "academic money". According to the semi annual report of Tongfang shares, the operator of HowNet in 2018, the gross profit margin of Tongfang HowNet is as high as 58.83%, far exceeding that of most commercial companies. A few years ago, HowNet issued a statement to reissue the royalties to the uploaders of master's and doctoral theses. In recent years, HowNet has changed to issue HowNet consumption cards to college graduates with master's degree and doctor's degree every year. After completing the final defense, each master and doctor who graduated in that year can receive a HowNet consumption card with a certain face value through the school. However, some students do not buy HowNet's behavior of issuing consumption cards. Li Yihan (pseudonym), a graduate student who graduated from a university in Shanghai in 2018, is one of them. When she graduated, she got a HowNet consumption card with a face value of 300 yuan from the University. However, in her opinion, a consumption card is not enough to offset the manuscript fee of a thesis. "We have more than 50000 words for a paper. We pay 300 yuan for the manuscript, which is still the card of HowNet," she said. "It contains our papers, but the manuscript fee can only be used to download the papers on their platform. How can it count like this?" The Zhi network card with a face value of 300 yuan on an e-commerce platform is only sold for 34.79 yuan If calculated according to the number of words, the manuscript fee of 50000 words is 300 yuan, and the manuscript fee of 1000 words is 6 yuan. Conversely, according to the charging standard of HowNet, general individual users download articles from HowNet and charge according to the number of pages, with 0.5 yuan per page. The number of pages of a paper with more than 50000 words is about 70. If you want to download the full text, the single download cost is about 35 yuan. The cost of doctoral theses with more than 100000 words is higher. Another often criticized is the increasing service fees of HowNet. According to south wind window, the transaction volume of HowNet database of a 211 university in South China in 2019 reached 1.1 million, an increase of 70000, while the transaction prices of superstar and Wanfang were 100000 and 103000. These questions about HowNet's income mode essentially stem from HowNet's stumbling on the road of commercialization. 02 Complex academic "Foxconn"? "To use a vivid metaphor, my impression of HowNet is like an academic 'Foxconn' factory." Zhang Chao, a former employee of HowNet, said. This impression comes from the monotony of work flow and the employee concentration in paper collection and processing. After graduation in 2014, Zhang Chao from Shanxi joined the local HowNet in Taiyuan. According to his memory, the number of people in Shanxi Branch exceeded 500 at the most. The position of Shanxi branch is unusual in HowNet. Since 2015, HowNet has established branches in important provinces in China to strengthen regional operation and management. Zhang Chao told it times that only Beijing head office and Shanxi Branch will collect and process the original data of HowNet's core business - database, and other branches scattered all over the country are only responsible for market and technology. Li Jiao (pseudonym), who left HowNet in 2018 to start a business, confirmed this statement. He happened to join the Guangdong Branch of HowNet, which was recently established in 2015, and successively held positions in marketing, technology and sales for three years. This branch without collection and processing business expanded from more than 20 people to more than 60 people in three years - the largest volume in the branch except Shanxi and Beijing HowNet. Zhang Chao's post is classified editor. His main responsibility is to classify documents and organize them into economic, political, Marxist and other categories. In addition to the classification work, when a paper published in a journal enters the HowNet database, it often goes through machine scanning, manual proofreading, political review editing and other links, which require a lot of manpower. Due to the need to deal with academic papers, most of Zhang Chao's colleagues are master graduates, and their majors are not single. "HowNet's income is not low, the average salary is usually adjusted upward with reference to local standards, and includes formal five insurances and one fund." Li Jiao disclosed to the reporter of it times. The reporter consulted the recruitment information of China HowNet boss and found that at present, the number of employees of China HowNet exceeds 1000, and most posts with the word "editor" in Beijing only recruit masters. Source: boss direct employment Zhang Chao's post salary is paid by piece. He is responsible for economics. He can complete the classification of 2000 ~ 3000 articles every day. In KPI performance, academic journals are counted as 1, newspapers are counted as 0.6, and non academic magazines are counted as 0.7, which means that Zhang Chao has to read at least 4-5 articles per minute. This is a "plain and boring job". After four years of employment, Zhang Chao left here as an "old employee". HowNet's personnel mobility is very large, and the turnover rate in that year exceeds 40%. "The national company of HowNet may have more than 1000 people. In terms of scale, it is a small company. But from the customers it serves and the internal structure, it is a very large organization." Li Jiao said that HowNet is making progress. For example, there are fewer and fewer links such as paper scanning, but the overall development speed can not be compared with that of Internet companies. This may be the other side of the impression that the old knowledge database is close to the "Foxconn" factory: HowNet can't keep up with the Internet. For several years, the knowledge payment projects of HowNet, such as Didao, mobile HowNet, global academic express and the transformation of mobile Internet have not been successful. At present, HowNet has covered most domestic universities - under the premise of limited market space, the load caused by complex structure, human demand and development anxiety may be one of the important reasons for its price rise. Nowadays, the spearhead of public opinion is directed at the single and rigid payment mode of HowNet. When Baidu Library and other Internet products that rely on advertising, knowledge payment, membership fee and other means of realization rise, people who are used to being free gradually find that HowNet is "old-fashioned". 03 A knowledge engineering of positioning deviation? From a longer-term perspective, CNKI also has social responsibility as a "China knowledge infrastructure project". During the two sessions in 2020, Ni Minjing, deputy director of Shanghai Municipal Education Commission, once pointed out that China HowNet urgently needs transformation. Scholars Zhai Yi and Liu Jie pointed out in the administrative law governance of National Knowledge Infrastructure -- from the perspective of administrative licensing that China HowNet, as a market-oriented subject, has obtained the qualification to participate in the construction and operation of national knowledge infrastructure projects. From the perspective of "administrative licensing", The "bargaining" between HowNet and colleges and universities is actually the positioning deviation of ignoring the responsibility of national knowledge infrastructure project. Apart from the conjecture of commercial companies, is it possible for HowNet to have a better form? This will be a discussion on "academic sharing". In the case of Professor Zhao Dexin's paper being taken off the shelf, the focus of the debate is that the "monopoly" influence position of HowNet in the academic circle has almost formed. An academic journal editor of a university in Henan told the IT times that if a general journal wants to break into the core journal directory, it needs citation rate, manuscripts of famous authors and early reprint rate. Among them, the important factors of journal manuscripts: cited quantity, other cited quantity, influencing factors and other data can only be obtained through HowNet. In addition, these data are still one of the standards for assessment and promotion of many schools. Source: HowNet But how to define "monopoly"? In other words, should a commercial competitive relationship be formed between knowledge databases such as HowNet and VIP? Will this violate the original intention of the establishment of academic database institutions? This is not a problem given by a HowNet organization. The main foreign language database in the world is Elsevier, which has also continued to rise in prices in recent years. A teacher from a domestic university library told the IT times that although domestic universities use the "group purchase" method to purchase Elsevier, there will be a certain increase every year. "The industry has always called for unified procurement by the state, but due to historical reasons, it is still carried out in the way of University alliance, so the cost has been high." Elsevier's high fees have also been resisted by many scholars "Compared with copyright fees, I think it's more important to make academic achievements public for everyone to see." A postdoctoral teacher engaged in ancient literature research in a university in Shanghai told the IT times that academia itself has its publicity. "I think it is necessary for HowNet to exist as an academic resource platform. Journals will give us royalties, and the fees given to journals by HowNet also help these publications." Hu lianglin, deputy director of the big data Department of the computer network information center of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, director of the national public science data center of basic disciplines and Secretary General of the Central Committee of CODATA, held the same attitude. On November 23, 2021, UNESCO adopted the open science proposal, which mentioned that adhering to the principles of open science, the scientific knowledge obtained from research funded by public funds shall be subject to open license or dedicated to the public domain. Source: UNESCO Hu lianglin revealed that various countries are following up on the initiatives issued by UNESCO. Domestic departments and academic groups (such as the Central Committee of CODATA) have organized relevant activities around the domestic practice of open science to explore the China Program of open science. HowNet work
Edit：Li Ling Responsible editor：Chen Jie
Source：ITtimes
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