Every graduation season, netizens always denounce it on HowNet. The reason is that the graduation season every year means that students need to write papers. To write papers, they must read and quote references. In addition, many schools stipulate that students need to use HowNet to check the duplicate of their papers, which leads students to pass the duplicate check once if they want to graduate smoothly, so students need to spend a lot of money to check the duplicate in advance through HowNet.
HowNet collects money from the author.
Many published articles should be included in HowNet. In the process of publishing papers and periodicals, publishers have to pay a lot of money to the editorial department of periodicals, mainly for the smooth publication of papers. So HowNet first collects some money from the author, and if the author needs to download the paper himself, he needs to spend extra money. HowNet makes money through authors.
HowNet charges users.
If students want to consult documents and read papers, they need to download or view them from HowNet, and these fees are not very low and the prices are relatively high. At the same time, the school buys some papers and literature libraries from HowNet every year for its own students to use. In this process, the school needs to pay several hundred to12 million to HowNet to purchase the database. HowNet earns high profits at no cost by buying from students and schools.
Should knowledge be paid?
As can be seen from the above explanation, HowNet makes money by charging both readers and authors. For knowledge, we should pay for knowledge, but HowNet is just a middleman, connecting the relationship between the author and the reader. The fees paid by readers did not reach the author, and the publishing fees paid by the author also belonged to periodical newspapers. The author's public papers published on the Internet should be used by students free of charge, while HowNet, as a monopoly institution, should be put on file for investigation. This trend should not continue.