For Chinese college students, CNKI is by no means an unfamiliar name. It is the largest integrator of academic electronic resources in China, including more than 95% of the officially published Chinese academic resources, from the undergraduate stage, CNKI is almost the only formal channel for students to retrieve and download academic resources.
At the end of last year, Zhao Dexin, an 89-year-old retired professor, sued CNKI for reprinting more than 160 of its articles without authorization and charging for downloading them herself. After the fermentation of the incident, CNKI's practice was ridiculed by netizens as "borrowing chickens and laying eggs". The incident also sparked a discussion about whether CNKI is suspected of industry monopoly.
Recently, CNKI has once again appeared on Weibo's hot search.
According to the Red Star Capital Bureau, recently, a news that "the Chinese Academy of Sciences was overwhelmed by nearly 10 million renewal costs and suspended the CNKI database" circulated on social media.
It is suspected that the Literature and Information Center of the Chinese Academy of Sciences issued a notice on April 8, saying that "in 2021, the total cost of the Chinese Academy of Sciences Group's CNKI database subscription has reached the level of tens of millions, and the high ordering cost has become a 'big Mac' in the introduction of resources by the Chinese Academy of Sciences Group." ”
On April 17, a teacher in charge of implementing this matter in the Library Department of the Chinese Academy of Sciences confirmed to Red Star News that the nearly "tens of millions of levels" renewal fees and the suspension of CNKI access were true, and the major institutes of the Chinese Academy of Sciences were actively responding to the impact of the suspension of CNKI. "As of April 20, 2022, the CNKI database will be deactivated. In the future, wanfang and Weipu will be replaced, and the documents that cannot be found can be transmitted by literature and so on. As for when access to CNKI will be resumed, the teacher said that it is not certain at present, "at least this year there should be no such plan."
The Chinese Academy of Sciences has stopped using CNKI
According to online information, the Suspected Chinese Academy of Sciences Literature and Information Center issued a notice on April 8 saying that Tongfang CNKI (Beijing) Technology Co., Ltd. suspended the use of the CNKI database by the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and from now on, it will not be possible to download CNKI scientific and technological journals and doctoral and master's degree dissertation data normally. The notice also mentioned: "In 2021, the total cost of ordering the CNKI database of the Chinese Academy of Sciences Group has reached the level of tens of millions, and the high ordering cost has become the 'Big Mac' in the introduction of resources by the Chinese Academy of Sciences Group." ”
Regarding the reasons for the suspension, the notice said: "The Chinese Academy of Sciences and Tongfang CNKI have actively discussed the cost and subscription model, but after many rounds of arduous negotiations, CNKI database still adheres to the renewal fee of nearly 10 million, and the conditions are quite harsh in terms of the number of members and the price of a single family." ”
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According to the notice, according to the above situation, the Literature and Information Center of the Chinese Academy of Sciences is considering forming an alternative guarantee for the CNKI database through the Vip Journal Database and the Wanfang Dissertation Database.
The Documentation and Information Center of the Chinese Academy of Sciences issued a notice of trial opening of the Wanfang database on the 14th
An insider at a science and engineering research institute of the Chinese Academy of Sciences told Red Star Capital Bureau that on April 15, his research institute issued an email notice to stop renewing CNKI database, which mentioned the problem that the price of CNKI database was too high.
According to China Business Daily, CNKI divides the school into different levels such as general undergraduate colleges and key undergraduate colleges, and the fees charged are different according to the number of schools and different scientific research conditions. Better schools do more scientific research, and there are more resources used by CNKI, so the fees are relatively high.
As can be seen from the Chinese government procurement network, in 2022, Shanghai Normal University purchased the "CNKI" series of electronic resources at a price of 798,000 yuan; Beijing Language and Culture University renewed the CNKI database at a price of 654,600 yuan; the Central South University Library purchased the CNKI database at a price of 1.5 million yuan; and Wuhan University of Technology purchased the CNKI database at a price of 1.2785 million yuan in 2022.
In contrast, the purchase price of Wanfang Database is much lower than that of CNKI. On February 28, the amount of procurement of Wanfang database by Southwest University for Nationalities was 338,000 yuan; the amount of procurement of Wanfang database by the Innovation and Development Center of Harbin Engineering University in Qingdao was 180,000 yuan.
CNKI's gross profit margin is higher
According to public information, CNKI is a concept of national knowledge infrastructure, initiated by Tsinghua University and Tsinghua Tongfang, and is an informatization construction project with the goal of realizing the dissemination, sharing and value-added utilization of knowledge resources in the whole society.
According to Qixinbao, the "CNKI" project belongs to Tongfang CNKI (Beijing) Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Tongfang CNKI"), and Wang Liangming is the legal representative and also serves as the general manager. The company is a wholly foreign-owned company, and its 100% controlled shareholder is CNKI International Holdings Limited.
At the same time, Wang Liangming is also the legal representative of Tongfang CNKI Digital Publishing Technology Co., Ltd. The company was founded on July 8, 1999, and was changed from Tongfang Optical Co., Ltd. on January 15, 2014, and the legal representative was changed from Lu Zhicheng to Wang Mingliang. Tongfang shares hold 98.98% of Tongfang CNKI Digital Publishing Technology Co., Ltd.
Tongfang shares (600100. SH) said in the financial report that Tongfang CNKI is its grandson company, holding 100% of the shares, mainly engaged in Internet publishing and service business, has formed the "CNKI" portal website, to provide users with a series of products such as "China Academic Journals Database" and "China Doctoral Master's Thesis Database".
By the end of 2017, CNKI had more than 20,000 institutional users, more than 20 million individual registered users, 2 billion full-text downloads per year, and more than 150,000 online users on the website. It is not free to read and access CNKI content. However, due to its large and comprehensive advantages in academic resources, the libraries of various universities are basically customers of CNKI.
CNKI has maintained a gross profit margin of about 50%, which is also related to its extremely high market share. At present, CNKI is already the largest integrator of academic electronic resources in China, including more than 95% of the officially published academic resources of Chinese. However, in recent years, its frequent price increases have triggered protests from universities. According to media reports, around 2016, peking university, Wuhan University of Technology and other universities announced the suspension of CNKI due to the problem of CNKI price increases. However, the above-mentioned schools later resumed the use of CNKI.
Image source: Tongfang Shares 2020 Annual Report
Editor| Sun Zhicheng, Wang Jiaqi, Du Hengfeng
Proofread | duan lian
Cover image from Visual China
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