The State Administration for Market Regulation (SAMR) has imposed a penalty of 87.6 million yuan ($12.58 million) on Chinese Knowledge Information Gateway, a domestic online resource of published academic essays. The penalty amounts to 5 percent of CNKI's sales in 2021.
The SAMR announced the decision on Monday, following a seven-month investigation. In May, the SAMR launched a probe against CNKI for suspected abuse of its monopoly in the market. Even before the probe in May, several scholars had filed cases against CNKI for making use of their academic papers for profit without their consent or without paying them.
Although CNKI promotes itself as a "knowledge information gateway", it was hindering free flow of knowledge and profiting from other people's hard labor, said China Daily.
Of late, CNKI had raised its service charges so much that some academic research institutions had to stop buying academic papers from it. Reportedly, it was even forcing publishers and educational institutions to work exclusively with it since 2014, violating antitrust laws, SAMR added.
By repeatedly raising its prices, CNKI was hindering free flow of knowledge to those who needed it the most. Neither was it sharing the profits it was making with those working in the field of knowledge to create the content.
Such behavior hindered competition in China's academic database market, violated the legitimate rights and interests of users, and jeopardized innovation and development of related markets and academic exchanges, SAMR said.
According to SCMP, an investigation initiated by the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) in June is still ongoing, on the grounds that CNKI holds a large amount of personal information and important data covering areas that include national defence, telecommunications and finance.
The big fine imposed by the SAMR not only penalizes CNKI for its monopoly, but is also a strong signal to other agencies. CNKI said it will “accept sincerely” the penalty, and announced 15 rectification measures including ending exclusive agreements with universities and cutting its database subscription fees by 30 per cent in the next three years.
Sources: China Daily, SCMP
