HowNet collects academic papers from researchers at low prices or even free of charge, which has always been controversial for paid use by scientific research institutions and teachers and students in colleges and universities.
"The compensation of 700,000 yuan to Professor Zhao Dexin is that HowNet bears the responsibility of copyright infringement and belongs to the nature of compensation for losses." Cong Lixian, dean of the School of Intellectual Property of East China University of Political Science and Law, said that judging from the court's judgment, HowNet collected a large number of academic papers without the author's permission or the permission was flawed, which was an infringement. In general, the copyright of these papers still belongs to the author himself during the copyright protection period.
At present, the incident caused a chain reaction, and Professor Zhao Dexin's student Su Shaozhi also filed a lawsuit with HowNet and won the case. However, the reporter contacted a number of experts and scholars who were strongly dissatisfied with HowNet's behavior. "People who need papers have to pay to download them, and as a result, the author can't get a penny", but they all refuse to accept further interviews. A young scholar told the reporter: "For us, if the paper can't get on the Internet because of rights protection, it will face great academic losses."
The opportunity of clearly marking the price and checking the weight on the internet has sharply increased the burden on students.
In recent years, all kinds of schools at all levels have strict requirements for paper duplicate checking, and the demand for paper duplicate checking function by graduates has soared.
Compared with the platforms such as VIP Consulting and Wan Fang Data, the number and types of academic papers collected by HowNet are remarkable, and the exclusive journals collected by HowNet far exceed other platforms in the same field in terms of subject coverage and paper quality.
The fifth issue of Modern Law (20 19) published the article "Regulation Dilemma and Solution of Unfair High Price Behavior of Academic Database Operators". According to the author's statistics, HowNet's full-text periodical database contains 3,964 exclusive and only authorized periodicals, accounting for 43% of the total number of periodicals in China. Among them, there are 778 core journals, accounting for about 42% of all core journals; There are 194 kinds of top 3 journals in various disciplines, accounting for 64% of the total number of top 3 journals. Therefore, many colleges and universities require that the results of duplicate checking by HowNet shall prevail.
At present, colleges and universities generally provide students with two free duplicate checking tests, one is the initial inspection and the other is the professional inspection, that is, the final inspection. After using up the free paper duplicate checking opportunities provided by the school, many students are willing to spend money to buy more paper duplicate checking services.
After spending nearly 1000 yuan to buy the duplicate checking service in 760 yuan, Zhang Yiling, a graduate of Hunan University, submitted the final version of her graduation thesis to the school. The result of duplicate checking is close to the final result of school duplicate checking, which is 5. 1%. "If this money is used for food, you can eat it in the canteen for more than a month."
Regarding the problem of high fees reported by students, HowNet has repeatedly announced that the duplicate checking function has never been open to individual users, and only institutional users such as universities and scientific research units have this right.
In April 2020, HowNet issued a notice, saying that "it is becoming more and more serious for criminals to steal or illegally obtain testing accounts by technical means and sell the academic misconduct testing service of HowNet to individuals for profit through the Internet", and penalties such as "leaking or reselling services due to poor management, canceling the user's annual service model and re-approving the annual service quantity" will be taken.
On the eve of this year's graduation season, the cost of online platform duplicate checking has increased again, making graduates "unacceptable". The reporter found on an e-commerce platform that merchants claimed that the price of papers based on HowNet was on the rise. The higher the selling price, the more complete the database content behind it, and even the quotation of 1.8 million yuan and 2,000 yuan appeared at one time.
In addition, in order to ensure that the repetition rate of papers will not encounter difficulties, some e-commerce platforms have also derived "weight reduction" services to help authors reduce the repetition rate of papers.
Jing Yi, a graduate of a university in Nanchang, bought a weight check and artificial intelligence "slimming" service on an e-commerce platform at a cost of 1500 yuan. Five days later, she got a "paper below the repetition rate limit stipulated by the school".
In view of an undergraduate thesis with a full text of about 23,000 words and a repetition rate close to 30%, the merchants providing duplicate checking and "weight reduction" services replied to the reporter, "Reduce it to below 15%, charge 530 yuan, reduce it to below 10%, and the price is 660 yuan. Feedback within 2 days, using China HowNet system ".
Merchants claim that reducing the repetition rate ensures that the general idea, academic point of view, 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 a review teacher of the corresponding major and reduce the repetition rate by changing the expression. To ensure the professionalism of the article. "
"Taking the opportunity to check your weight as a commodity sale has also spawned a' slimming' service, which has seriously undermined 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 the duplicate checking service is not open to individuals. On the other hand, students have the need to check the weight. Why can't the school provide students with multiple opportunities to check the duplicate?
"The school provides free duplicate checking opportunities to warn students not to plagiarize, not to help students escape plagiarism monitoring." Li Yu explained the school's consideration. At this point, HowNet and the school have their own reasons, but only push the demand of some graduates' papers to the market.
The continuous price increase of HowNet is unbearable for colleges and universities.
Previously, many universities questioned the high price and rising price of HowNet service.
June 20 16, Wuhan University of Technology said that the school would suspend the use of HowNet because the renewal fee was too high and the quotation was rising every year. From 20 10 to 20 16, the royalty of HowNet * * increased by about 132%, with an average annual increase.
Because the renewal price of HowNet has risen sharply, "the school can't reach an agreement with HowNet on the renewal price", and Peking University and Taiyuan University of Technology have also issued notices that HowNet will be closed soon. This storm also affected many universities in Hebei, Shandong and Yunnan. According to the reporter's understanding, these colleges and universities quickly re-subscribed to the HowNet service, but this does not mean that the related problems have been properly solved.