There is a charge for college students to download papers on HowNet, but many schools buy off the students' rights of HowNet in advance, so that students can download the required papers or documents on HowNet.
China HowNet is a network platform for knowledge discovery, which provides domestic and foreign readers with unified retrieval, unified navigation, online reading and downloading services for China academic literature, foreign literature, dissertations, newspapers, conferences, yearbooks, reference books and other resources.
Because many schools have signed annual agreements with HowNet, it's free for students who signed the agreements to download relevant documents through HowNet, but this free does not mean that they don't receive money. The money is paid by the school for you. HowNet pays the authors hired by China Doctoral Dissertation Full-text Database (CDFD) and China Excellent Master Dissertation Full-text Database (CMFD), but the remuneration is not particularly high.
Before 2008, the payment standard of academic year's remuneration was as follows: the copyright owner of doctoral thesis got the "CNKI network database universal retrieval reading card" with RMB face value in 300 yuan at one time, and the remuneration in RMB in 80 yuan; The copyright owner of the master's thesis obtained a CNKI universal retrieval reading card at one time, with a face value of 200 yuan RMB and a cash reward of 30 yuan RMB.
After 2008, the payment standard of manuscript fee is as follows: the copyright owner of doctoral thesis will get a "CNKI universal retrieval and reading card for network database" with a face value of 400 yuan RMB, and the cash manuscript fee is 100 RMB; The copyright owner of the master's thesis obtained a CNKI universal retrieval reading card at one time, with a face value of 300 yuan RMB and a cash reward of 60 yuan RMB.
HowNet download fee standard: full text of literary journals: 0.5 yuan/page for conventional digital publishing, and 1 yuan/page for exclusive digital publishing; Dissertation: master thesis 15 yuan/Ben, doctoral thesis 25 yuan/Ben; Conference Paper: 0.5 yuan/page for conventional digital publishing and 1 yuan/page for exclusive digital publishing.
The spread of knowledge itself should not be hindered. The practice of monopolizing academic information can certainly meet the profit purpose of enterprises, but it is not helpful to the development of academic undertakings. In order to promote the free dissemination and interaction of academic information, we should break the knowledge monopoly and information barrier, or at least try to reduce the dissemination cost of academic information.