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2016 is known as the first year of knowledge payment.

A series of landmark events put the knowledge payment station on the wind. On May 15 this year, the paid voice Q & a platform “sub answer” was launched. Many celebrities and experts in various fields have joined this one minute paid Q & a model. Following closely, Luo Zhenyu, the founder of logical thinking, created the “get” app, and Zhihu also launched “Zhihu live”.

In March, 2017, douban.com launched its first paid product “Douban time”, while Ma Huateng, the founder of Tencent, announced that wechat official account was officially launched, and paid subscription pushed knowledge payment to a climax.

In fact, before practitioners shouted that the era of knowledge payment was coming, there was a company that let knowledge payment enter thousands of households. Almost every college student has heard its name, and most universities and scientific research institutions need to pay for its use right.

Relying on the huge database and the “knowledge payment” model, the company’s revenue reached 380 million yuan in 2010, and maintained a stable and rapid increase of more than 10% every year. The gross profit margin has never been less than 50%. In 2021, the revenue reached 1.289 billion yuan, and the gross profit margin was 53.35%.

The originator of this knowledge payment company is Tongfang HowNet (Beijing) Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as “HowNet”). However, with such a cash cow, Tongfang shares of the parent company suffered a huge loss of 1.879 billion yuan in 2021. Moreover, the controversial HowNet business has attracted regulatory attention, and antitrust may become the “sword of Damocles” hanging on the head of HowNet.

Colleges and universities complain about price increases every year

HowNet has once again caused an uproar of public opinion.

On April 17, an internal email from the Chinese Academy of Sciences circulated on the Internet. The email said that in 2021, the total cost of ordering HowNet database by the Chinese Academy of Sciences Group reached tens of millions. The renewal fee in 2022 is still “close to ten million”. Due to the high fee, the Chinese Academy of Sciences is unable to bear it and is forced to stop using HowNet.

Online announcement of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, source: Network

On the same day, the person in charge of the Chinese Academy of Sciences said in an interview that the news was true. However, HowNet later responded that “the news is untrue”.

On April 19, HowNet officially issued a document saying that in 2022, the document and information center of the Chinese Academy of Sciences adjusted the procurement mode of some databases at home and abroad, including HowNet database, from unified centralized procurement mode to joint procurement mode organized by institutes and institutes in need. After friendly negotiation, the work of adjusting the subscription mode of HowNet database is being carried out in an orderly manner. Each institute selects the subscription content, and plans to complete the group work, sign the agreement and start the service in 2022 in the near future.

Although both sides hold their own opinions, it is a fact that HowNet has caused controversy, and this is not the first time that HowNet has attracted public attention because of the charging problem.

In December 2021, Zhao Dexin, an 89 year old retired professor at Zhongnan University of economics and law, found that HowNet had put more than 160 academic documents on the shelves without authorization, and the author had to pay for downloading the documents. In a rage, the angry old man took HowNet to court. Finally, HowNet was sentenced to compensate Zhao Dexin for more than 700000 yuan.

After the lawsuit, HowNet said that it had opened the author service platform in 2019. After all authors registered their real names, they can use their works for free indefinitely.

While the author of the paper is not paid, HowNet aims at individual users, and the vast majority of documents need to be paid. According to the “billing standard table” of HowNet, the full text of conventional digital publishing journals and conference papers are charged a download fee of 0.5 yuan per page, the download price of master’s thesis is 7.5 yuan, and the download price of doctoral thesis is 9.5 yuan. This is also the basis of a reduction in the download cost of the thesis. Previously, the doctoral thesis was 25 yuan and the master’s thesis was 15 yuan.

Source: HowNet

HowNet charges not only in the field of papers. If you want to download the contents of reference books such as yearbooks, statistical yearbooks and dictionaries, patents and scientific and technological achievements, you need to pay. Even academic pictures can only be used at a price of 2 yuan.

The above charging prices are for individual users. If you are a student or teacher in a university, you don’t need to spend money to consult and download many documents of HowNet in the school. This is because colleges and universities have purchased databases from HowNet, and the procurement is generally carried out once a year.

Source: China government procurement network

Value planet inquired about the bid winning results related to China government procurement network and HowNet. In 2022, the renewal fee of Tsinghua University was 1.8803 million yuan; Wuhan University of technology is 1278500 yuan. In 2021, the purchase price of Beijing University of technology is even as high as 2.94 million yuan.

It can be found that different institutions have different renewal fees. But the same thing is that prices rise every year. Taking Beijing Language and Culture University as an example, the purchase fee increased from 445000 yuan in 2019 to 654500 yuan in 2022, an increase of nearly 50% in four years; Central South University increased from 1355000 yuan to 1.5 million yuan, an increase of about 10.7%; Wuhan University of technology rose from 1.15 million yuan to 1.27 million yuan, an increase of about 10.4%.

Many colleges and universities have publicly “complained” about this price rise. In March 2016, Peking University Library announced that “due to the high price rise of HowNet database, the library is now fully engaged in negotiations. The contract period of the previous year ended March 31, 2016. After the expiration of the contract, HowNet database may interrupt the access service of Peking University at any time.”

In December 2018, the library of Taiyuan University of technology announced that “since the renewal price and use mode of the database are not consistent with HowNet, our teachers and students have suspended access to HowNet series databases since January 1, 2019.”

Since then, Taiyuan University of technology has also turned to Wanfang Data knowledge service system and VIP Chinese periodical service platform, the competitors of HowNet. This year’s bid winning results show that the bid winning price of 10000 square meters is 200000 yuan, and the bid winning price of VIP is only 80000 yuan. In contrast, HowNet’s quotation in the bid winning list is as high as 600000 yuan.

Massive resources are hard to match

So why can HowNet sell so expensive? The most direct reason is that HowNet has a large number of academic resources.

According to the official website, HowNet has now included periodicals published in Chinese Mainland