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Chinese Academy of Sciences drops huge research database

The Chinese Academy of Sciences’ subscription to China’s giant research publishing database China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI) has been suspended this week, with the academy citing high subscription fees and “extremely harsh” subscription conditions as the reason.

The Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) Library issued a “Notice on the Imminent Deactivation of CNKI” to all users in the CAS system on 15 April saying no consensus was reached on the CNKI subscription plan, adding that access to the database would stop on 21 April.

In a separate email circulating widely on Chinese social media, CAS condemned the subscription fees charged by the CNKI database – more than CNY10 million (US$1.6 million) last year.

It said the cost had become a “giant burden” on CAS resources and that it was suspending its subscription after “many rounds” of tough negotiations this year, during which CNKI insisted on maintaining its high fees.

“As a result, CAS can no longer gain access to CNKI’s database and the academy is considering other institutions for replacement,” CAS said. CAS Library staff confirmed to Chinese official media that the CNKI service had been suspended despite CNKI claiming the contents of the CAS email were “not true”.

There has been a backlash against CNKI in recent years with many institutions criticising it for high subscription prices and ‘monopolistic practices’, but CAS – the country’s highest academic institution for natural sciences and a major science and technology powerhouse – is by far the largest and most prestigious research organisation to refuse its terms.

CAS has more than 69,000 formal employees and more than 79,000 graduate students and researchers at its 13 regional branches, and over 114 affiliated scientific research institutes and universities, including the University of Science and Technology of China in Hefei, Anhui province, the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing, ShanghaiTech University and Shenzhen Institute of Advanced Technology.

Largest academic database

CNKI is China’s biggest academic publishing platform and provider of online academic resources with over 20 million users and serving more than 20,000 institutions, including universities, research institutions, hospitals, libraries and government departments. It stores some 95% of Chinese academic papers and resources as well as many foreign articles and abstracts.

Privately owned but under the supervision of China’s education ministry, in the first half of 2021, revenue from CNKI’s main academic resources business reached CNY496 million (US$77.4 million), with a gross profit margin of 51.3% according to the company’s financial report, cited by Chinese official media.

Virtually all Chinese PhD theses are stored on CNKI and often undergraduate submissions must be submitted via its platform. Students must also pay for each download of an individual masters or doctoral thesis.

The “extremely harsh” subscription conditions referred to by CAS included the number of individuals allowed to download papers under the CNKI group plan, with pricing often rising steeply according to the number of users within an institution.

CAS has said it is looking into using the Wanfang database (enhanced version), an affiliate of the Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology which stores more than 44.8 million journal articles – compared to 280 million articles on CNKI – 3.84 million dissertations and theses and 2.98 million conference papers, according to its website, as well as the CQVIP database, a smaller private online academic database.

But academics have acknowledged that CNKI is the most comprehensive of all the academic databases.

Past suspensions

At the end of 2021, the official Communist Party mouthpiece, People’s Daily, noted that six institutions had suspended access to CNKI in the past decade, including Peking University, Nanjing Normal University, Wuhan University of Technology and others, citing exorbitant increases in subscription prices.

In January 2016, Wuhan University of Technology issued a notice of the suspension of CNKI, saying that “due to the outrageous increase in the renewal price, the negotiation between our university and CNKI Company was unsuccessful. Over the years, CNKI Company has raised prices too much.”

It said CNKI subscriptions rose by around 19% a year between 2010 and 2016.

In March the same year, Peking University also posted a notice that it was about to suspend its subscriptions, saying that it could not easily accommodate such excessive price increases.

However, all eventually resubscribed to CNKI after a short hiatus – sometimes a break of only a few weeks.

Science media in China noted a huge difference between universities in the amount they have to pay from records of transaction announcements of the CNKI database of universities and scientific research institutes through the Chinese Government Procurement Network.

For example, Wuhan University of Technology paid CNY1,278,500 this year; Tsinghua University spent CNY1,880,300, but Beijing Language and Culture University only paid CNY654,500.

Universities have said their institutional subscriptions rise every year.

A researcher with a physical chemistry PhD from CAS said on Chinese social media: “Although I estimate a new compromise will be reached in the end, CNKI will be discounted and the [Chinese] Academy of Sciences will continue to buy, I am still pleased to see that CAS has stopped purchasing CNKI databases,” describing it as a “waste of money”.

Another with a PhD in microelectronics and solid-state electronics from Southeast University said CNKI had “become a cancer, and the harm far outweighs the benefit”.

A CAS librarian told official Chinese media it would instead use the Wanfang database (enhanced version) and VIP database as alternatives to CNKI.

Court case

In December 2021, Zhao Dexin, an 89-year-old renowned retired professor of economic history at Zhongnan University of Economics and Law in Wuhan, won a copyright infringement case against CNKI, attracting huge publicity.

Zhao said CNKI had acquired his papers (through acquiring the journals they were published in) without informing or paying him. CNKI was ordered to pay CNY700,000 to Zhao in damages. Zhao’s case was seen as a rare victory against the behemoth publishing platform.

In the wake of the huge publicity surrounding Zhao’s victory, CNKI this year lowered the download price of masters dissertations from CNY15 to CNY7.5 – a 50% drop, while the download price of each doctoral dissertation was reduced from CNY25 to CNY9.5, a 62% reduction.

The Anti-monopoly Division of the State Administration for Market Regulation has said it was looking into complaints of monopolistic practices by CNKI, but experts said it was a complex area that would take time to be investigated.