Cover news reporter Yang Feng
Professors have to charge for downloading their papers, the cost of re-examination is expensive, and the cost of renewal is increasing year by year. In recent years, CNKI, the largest academic journal database in China, which has been questioned by the public, has once again stood on the cusp of the storm due to the news that the Chinese Academy of Sciences has "renewal costs of tens of millions, the renewal conditions are harsh, and CNKI will be discontinued". On the afternoon of April 19, CNKI issued a note saying that its services to the Chinese Academy of Sciences had not been stopped or interrupted, and the ordering work in 2022 was being carried out in an orderly manner.
On April 19, a number of staff members of the University Library of the Chinese Academy of Sciences told the cover news reporter that the current use of CNKI will not be interrupted, and after the signing of the new annual service, the resource library of CNKI that teachers and students of the Chinese Academy of Sciences can access may be adjusted. Can "deactivating the boycott" make CNKI reduce prices? Where does CNKI's price increase come from? As the largest and most widely used database website in China, will CNKI be investigated by antitrust?
After "deactivating" the boycott of CNKI
The purchase price of colleges and universities is still increasing year by year
Chinese universities and research institutions have been dissatisfied with the price increase of CNKI database for more than a decade. Public information shows that in the decade from 2012 to 2021, at least 6 universities including Nanjing Normal University, Jinling Institute of Science and Technology, Wuhan University of Technology, Peking University, and Taiyuan University of Technology have issued announcements to suspend the use of CNKI, all due to the excessive increase of CNKI.
However, these "resistances" have never been "effective" to prevent CNKI from rising prices, and eventually ended with the resumption of use by colleges and universities. The director of a university library in Henan said in an interview with the media that "the 'leading boycott' of the Peking University Library did not produce much repercussions" made him deeply touched. The library staff of a university that had discontinued CNKI told reporters that the "suspension storm" was at most to reduce the amplitude of CNKI's price increase, and "not letting go of a point" was a common situation.
From the public bidding documents of Jinling Institute of Science and Technology, we can see the difficult negotiation process after its suspension and resumption of use.
Jinling Institute of Science and Technology 2016-2020 CNKI database purchase price changes. Drafting/Yang Feng
In June 2014, the library of Jinling Institute of Science and Technology issued a notice that the contract between the library and Tongfang CNKI Technology Co., Ltd. expired, and a new round of purchase agreement had been negotiated for 3 months, but there was no agreement due to the company's excessive price increase and service content reduction.
In 2016, Jinling Institute of Science and Technology purchased CNKI resource library for 381,936 yuan, and sold for 381,900 yuan, and the transaction price dropped by 36 yuan.
In 2017, Jinling Institute of Science and Technology purchased CNKI resource libraries for 320,000 yuan and sold for 320,000 yuan, and the reason for the decline in purchase price was that only 3 sub-databases were purchased, rather than the whole package of data.
In October 2017, Jinling Institute of Science and Technology launched the competitive negotiation and procurement of CNKI's whole package database in 2018, with a budget of 420,000 yuan, and terminated the procurement activities because there were less than 3 suppliers that met the competitive requirements in the procurement process.
In November 2017, Jinling Institute of Science and Technology re-launched the 2018 CNKI database competitive negotiation and procurement project with a budget of 420,000 yuan, and CNKI won the bid as a single source, with a transaction price of 416,000 yuan.
In December 2018, Jinling Institute of Science and Technology inquired about the CNKI database for 2019 with a budget of 250,000 yuan, and changed from inquiry procurement to single-source procurement, and was sold at a price of 250,000 yuan.
In 2020, Jinling Institute of Science and Technology transferred from inquiry to single source to purchase CNKI database, and the transaction price recovered to 540,000 yuan. In the five years from 2016 to 2020, Jinling Institute of Science and Technology twice reduced the purchase price by unpacking the sub-database, but the purchase price still rose by 41%, with an average annual increase of 8.2%.
A library staff member of a university in Shanxi who had participated in the procurement of CNKI resources told reporters that the single-source procurement was because CNKI had exclusive resources and could not have other companies to participate in the bidding. Single-source procurement is different from other procurement methods, and the government stipulates that the opinions of three experts are also required on the spot when bidding for colleges and universities. The "uniqueness" and "irreplaceability" of CNKI resources are the words that frequently appear in relevant audit opinions.
Also because it is a single source procurement, universities have little room for negotiation when bidding. Spin-off resource packages are commonly used sales strategies of CNKI, a single resource package has low cost performance and limited coverage, but some school budgets are really insufficient, and cutting off some resources is the only way to reduce prices. The reporter's inquiry found that it is not uncommon for CNKI resource procurement flow targets caused by insufficient budgets of colleges and universities.
The cover news reporter inquired about the CNKI database procurement prices of 20 Chinese universities in 2021 and 2022 from the Chinese government procurement network. None of the purchase prices of the 20 universities have been reduced, and four universities have not increased their prices, with an average increase of 3.28%. The most price increase was Beijing Language and Culture University, up 14.04%. Other bidding documents of these universities also show that CNKI's purchase prices are much higher than other databases on the market.
The staff of a university library in Wuhan told the cover reporter that according to her understanding, the sales staff of CNKI and different universities have different sales strategies, and the price increases brought by them are different, on average, they are about 10%, and they are generally approaching the budget limit that schools can afford. "There is more information in the database" is the main reason given by the salesperson when the price increase.
Changes in the purchase price of CNKI database of 20 colleges and universities from 2021 to 2022. Drafting/Yang Feng
Library staff at several universities:
The exclusivity of CNKI resources makes teachers and students dependent
As the largest academic journal database in China, CNKI Project was the first information construction project to realize the dissemination, sharing and value-added utilization of knowledge resources in the whole society, and was initiated by Tsinghua University and Tsinghua Tongfang in June 1999. After more than 20 years of development, CNKI has become a leading digital library for Chinese academic resources at home and abroad. As of 2021, CNKI has included 1970 core journals in the Peking University edition, accounting for about 98.99% of the total number of core journals in Peking University. In the eyes of many college librarians, this is the bottom line that CNKI can get stuck in everyone's neck and continue to increase prices.
The library staff of a university that had discontinued CNKI told reporters that the "suspension storm" was at most to reduce the price increase of CNKI, "some of the resources of core journals Chinese only CNKI has, covering these contents Chinese academic one-stop search is difficult to achieve in other databases." In particular, undergraduates with weak English literature reading ability rely on CNKI. We can't stop for long. Can not fail to procure. ”
The staff of a university library in Shanxi also told reporters: "CNKI's Chinese academic journal resources are the most complete, teachers and students are used to it, and stopping procurement will bring inconvenience to teaching and scientific research." The suspension of CNKI incident of the Chinese Academy of Sciences may be an opportunity to change the price increase of CNKI for consecutive years, and our school has been renewed in 2022, up 20,000. Hopefully, next year's gains will be smaller. ”
Is CNKI suspected of violating the Anti-Monopoly Law?
The State Administration for Market Regulation is verifying the study
Successive years of price increases have indeed brought high profits to CNKI. CNKI project belongs to Tongfang CNKI (Beijing) Technology Co., Ltd., which was established in November 2004 and is 100% owned by Tongfang, an A-share listed company. According to the financial report of Tongfang shares, in 2020 alone, the main business income of Tongfang CNKI was 1.168 billion yuan, the net profit attributable to the mother was 193 million yuan, and the gross profit margin was 53.93%; in the first half of 2021, the company's main business income was 496 million yuan and the net profit attributable to the mother was 18.927 million yuan, with a gross profit margin of 51.30%.
Jia Shenli, a member of the Shaanxi Provincial Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference who served as the librarian of Xi'an Jiaotong University, pointed out the continuous price increase of CNKI in a proposal submitted to the Shaanxi Provincial Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference in 2020, and pointed out that the price increase was created by monopoly. Jia Shenli said that in recent years, Chinese the monopoly of digital academic resources has intensified, prices have continued to rise, the pressure on university funding has been increasing, and it is difficult for universities to resist the vicious price increase of academic resources.
Jia Shenli said that CNKI began to sell its journals with good use from its general library in 2018 to achieve the purpose of increasing the total price. Taking a university in Shaanxi as an example, the same resources spent 490,000 yuan in 2019, and CNKI quoted more than 650,000 yuan in 2020, with a total price increase of 33.6%.
For Jia Shenli, it reflects the continuous rise in the price of CNKI. The response given by the Shaanxi Provincial Development and Reform Commission was: it is recommended to reflect CNKI's behavior to the State Administration for Market Regulation.
During the two sessions of the National People's Congress in 2022, a number of representatives and members also spoke out on whether CNKI was suspected of monopoly, among which Ni Minjing, a member of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference and deputy director of the Shanghai Municipal Education Commission, said that CNKI has made knowledge more and more expensive, and the root cause lies in monopoly. "The most precious is often free, such as air, and knowledge is the air of modern society, and the lower the cost of knowledge acquisition, the more conducive it is to the construction of innovative countries," he said. ”
On March 9, 2022, the Anti-Monopoly Department of the State Administration for Market Regulation replied to a message on the reporter's website, saying: "The State Administration for Market Regulation is verifying and studying. On April 20, 2022, the cover reporter called the Anti-Monopoly Department of the State Administration for Market Regulation and learned that the problem is currently inconvenient to respond.
After the "Chinese Academy of Sciences suspension of CNKI incident", the People's Daily commented that the Chinese Academy of Sciences was deactivated from CNKI due to nearly 10 million renewal fees, and once again threw CNKI into the crater. The origin of the incident still needs to be bottomed out, and CNKI is accused of taking advantage of its "monopoly" position but it is not news. Knowledge is priceless and fees are well-founded, but it is indeed necessary for a business model to repeatedly collide with the public interest, frequently beat the hearts and minds of the world,and even play the law from time to time. How to balance the relationship between commercial profit and public interest, there should be a saying.
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