Can’t the Chinese Academy of Sciences stand the price increase of HowNet？ It’s not that simple!
Zhongxin Finance, April 19 (Reporter Song Yusheng) HowNet has made another hot search, this time because of the "price increase".
Weibo screenshot
Stop using HowNet because of the price increase?
The reason for this incident is that the news that "the Chinese Academy of Sciences stopped using the China HowNet database because of the nearly 10 million renewal fees" has been circulated on social media recently.
Red Star News reported that the suspected "Document Information Center of Chinese Academy of Sciences" issued a notice on April 8, saying, "In 2021, the total subscription fee of China Knowledge Network database of Chinese Academy of Sciences Group has reached 10 million, and the high subscription fee has become the ‘ Big Mac ’ 。”
Image source: Red Star News
China securities journal, Red Star News and other media verified that the Chinese Academy of Sciences stopped using the HowNet database; However, HowNet responded that Zhongxin Jingwei said that the above news was "untrue".
In any case, the reason why this matter has attracted attention is closely related to the price increase behavior of HowNet in the past. In addition, Zhao Dexin, a retired professor, sued HowNet for more than 700,000 yuan last year, and the problems between the Chinese Academy of Sciences and HowNet were even more noticeable.
The game between universities and HowNet has a long history.
Last year, it was reported that during the 10 years from 2012 to 2021, at least six colleges and universities issued an announcement to suspend the use of HowNet, all because the price of HowNet was too high to reach an agreement with the school.
These universities include Nanjing Normal University, Wuhan University of Technology and Peking University. The reasons for stopping HowNet are all related to the increase in renewal price.
For example, in 2016, Wuhan University of Technology announced that it would stop using HowNet "because the renewal price was outrageous". In the same year, Peking University official website also posted a notice that HowNet would stop using, on the grounds that "the price of database vendors was too high".
Price reduction or price increase?
It is worth noting that at the end of 2021, after the infringement case of HowNet caused widespread concern, HowNet lowered the download price of doctoral dissertations. Among them, the download price of each master’s degree thesis was lowered from 15 yuan to 7.5 yuan, down by 50%; The download price of doctoral dissertations was reduced from 25 yuan to 9.5 yuan, down by 62%.
Hownet screenshot
Just cut the price, and the media exposed the price increase. Is there a contradiction?
In fact, most college teachers and students do not "buy" papers directly from HowNet, but major universities and research institutes pay subscription fees to HowNet for teachers and students to use.
A number of teachers and students from different universities confirmed to reporters that the subscription fee paid by their universities to HowNet "will rise almost every year".
The reporter consulted the transaction announcement of the database of the procurement knowledge network of universities and research institutes through the China government procurement network. There is a big difference in their prices. For example, Wuhan University of Technology, which had previously announced the suspension of HowNet, spent 1,278,500 yuan on purchasing HowNet database this year; Beijing language and culture university has only 654,500 yuan; Tsinghua University has 1,880,300 yuan.
Screenshot from China government procurement network
Why did HowNet increase its price?
That is to say, although HowNet lowered the download unit price of doctoral dissertations, there is no information to confirm that the fees of university and research institutes have also decreased.
Journal of Tsinghua University (Philosophy and Social Sciences Edition) published an article this year entitled "Ten Comments on the Relationship between China HowNet and Journals and Their Authors — — From the article of Professor Zhao Dexin v. China HowNet Infringement Case, which reveals HowNet’s "sales model".
According to the article, universities and scientific research institutions basically purchase the related databases of HowNet needed by their own units by means of package, and it is free for scholars to download HowNet documents on the intranet of campus networks and other units (because the units have paid the bill uniformly).
The article also said that the package library is the main way of sales, but the total download amount of each package library user in the current year will undoubtedly become the basis for the price negotiation between HowNet and the package library users in the next year.
That is to say, the increase or decrease of subscription fees paid by universities and research institutes is related to the total amount of downloads by users of packages in that year.
In addition, we should also see that HowNet has indeed formed its "advantage" because it has collected almost all domestic academic documents. On the one hand, this has changed the use and dissemination of academic documents to some extent; On the other hand, such an "advantage" will certainly become an important factor in its bargaining.
But the question is, how far can we go by relying on HowNet, which has repeatedly raised the price of academic literature? (End)