Original title: What will be the impact of HowNet providing personal duplicate checking service?

On June 12, HowNet announced that it would directly provide duplicate checking services to individual users. It is reported that this is a rectification measure after comprehensively considering the needs of academic standardized management and the actual needs of teachers and students. The price of the personal edition is set at 1.5 yuan/1000 words, which is not higher than the price of the mainstream similar products in the market. At the same time, HowNet will continue to provide graduate students with free duplicate checking service for dissertations through graduate schools of colleges and universities, and the number of free duplicate checking service will increase from 1.5 times per capita to 3 times per capita. Why does CNKI support the opening of individual duplicate checking this time? What is the attitude of college teachers and students? What impact will it have on academic innovation?

Open personal duplicate checking service and eliminate the problem of black market and high price

While conducting independent research, it is necessary to quote literature and classic views and industry consensus. However, many college students have the problem of unsubstantiated citation or nonstandard indexing in the process of thesis creation. According to the investigation by the reporter of Yangcheng Evening News, as Zhiwang did not open its duplication check to individuals before, students' demand for academic standard self check has not been met. On the one hand, there are a lot of duplication check software and services in the market, but some duplication check tools lack professional literature big data, which is more difficult to guarantee the quality of duplication check than the lack of complete and authoritative resources; On the other hand, the price of the black market is abnormally high, and even artificially hyped during the graduation season.

Han Xiao, a doctoral student from a top tier university in Beijing, combined with his own experience in duplicate checking, said to the reporter, "Students usually go to Taobao to purchase the duplicate checking service of HowNet. Many people don't know how to obtain high-quality duplicate checking service from the official website of HowNet. Some students spent seven or eight hundred yuan, but they don't know how reliable the report is. Therefore, they hope to provide an official detection channel." An undergraduate student in Guangdong also felt the same way, "I don't know where the channels other than Zhiwang are. I heard Taobao is fake and I dare not use it. I hope there are other pre check channels besides schools."

According to many college students in Guangzhou interviewed by our reporter, the opportunity of one or two free duplicate check provided by the school during the graduation season is a test of the timing, and poor use may affect the graduation progress, so before the official duplicate check, students will find some websites or "copycat version of Zhiwang" for self inspection.

Li Chengcheng (a pseudonym), an undergraduate student, said: "The school requires students to submit their own papers, but there is only one chance to check duplicates. Most of the students will check in advance through Xuexin, PPYY, World Wide Web and other tests. Hope that HowNet can provide an official channel for duplicate checking. "

The reporter found that activities such as "registration/sign in with limited free words" seemed to be worth more, but in fact, there were hidden dangers such as article security, duplicate checking accuracy deviation, etc. Not only that, for large papers with more than 10000 words, although it is justifiable to spend money on duplicate checking, the prices of duplicate checking services in the market are not uniform and transparent, and there is a lack of unified objective standards to measure the rationality and fairness of prices and services.

The head of a well-known graduate school in Beijing pointed out that "because of all the needs of students, schools and research institutes, when the needs are not met, rent-seeking behavior will occur, which makes the duplication checking service alienated and spillover. The price of duplication checking for each paper on the black market is high. This has increased the burden of many students, leading to widespread complaints."

Individual duplication checking tool will help students to make academic innovation

In recent years, China has further strengthened the construction of scientific research integrity, and achieved certain results in working mechanism, system specification, education guidance, supervision and punishment. However, there are still weaknesses and weak links on the whole, and violations of scientific research integrity requirements still occur from time to time. It is understood that at present, most schools use duplication checking services mainly to protect the intellectual property rights of authors, provide clues about suspected plagiarism, plagiarism, multiple submissions of one manuscript and other behaviors, and control the academic quality of papers.

"The significance of the launch of the personal duplication checking service is not only here." The relevant person in charge of CNKI said that, as a tool that can be used for batch inspection of papers, the duplication checking system can not summarize all the values of an article, nor replace the determination of academic value, but the word repetition rate obtained through computer comparison and analysis can prevent plagiarism Plagiarism has great reference value and can help peer review to make decisions faster and better. Therefore, duplicate checking system is also one of the necessary ways to establish scientific research integrity system, which puts forward higher requirements for the positioning of duplicate checking system.

Dong Li, director of the Teaching Evaluation Office of the Department of Academic Affairs of Peking University, said, "It is necessary to consider duplication checking in advance. Some undergraduate students forget to mark when citing literature, which leads to the problem of high duplication ratio. By checking duplicates in advance and giving hints in the process of students' learning and writing, we can guide them to form good writing habits and help them to make standardized reference notes, so that there will be fewer problems in the writing process of later graduation papers. "

The significance of students' self checking by using the duplication checking system also lies in improving the innovation of the article's argument. Song Bo, director of the Quality Supervision Office of the Graduate School of the China University of Political Science and Law, believes that "from the perspective of academic innovation itself, a student should focus on how to carry out academic innovation, not on how to avoid duplication inspection. For this reason, the school has also issued relevant notices. Even so, it still cannot stop students' duplication inspection needs. The task of HowNet and the administrative department of the school is how to avoid to the maximum extent that students who are serious about writing excessively revise their papers, and also prevent students who do not have academic innovation ability from using duplicate checking software to wash and rewrite. "

According to the relevant person in charge of CNKI, one of the most important functions of the personal duplication checking tool is to help students judge whether their innovative ideas and methods are valid as soon as possible, improve the efficiency of their independent writing papers, and put more energy into innovation. Users should use the duplication checking tool correctly instead of opportunistic.

The price of individual duplicate checking service is 1.5 yuan/1000 words

It is worth noting that this time HowNet directly provides duplicate checking service to individual users, which is different from the indirect service mode that users need to use the service through their institutions in the past. Individual users can now register and use the service directly on the official website of HowNet as individuals. The pricing of the personal version is set at 1.5 yuan/1000 words by referring to the market prevailing mode of charging by the number of characters, Not higher than the price of mainstream similar products in the market.

According to a previous investigation by the reporter of Yangcheng Evening News, before Zhiwang opened its personal duplication check, users could find some stores on the black market that provided personal duplication check tools under the banner of Zhiwang. In the user comment area, many people could see that the duplication check results were inaccurate and deviated from the results of the legitimate Zhiwang provided by the school.

Search "Zhiwang Duplicate Check" on a famous e-commerce platform and select two stores that sell 1w+per month. The price is calculated by the time. The undergraduate thesis detection system is 198 yuan per time. The maximum number of words that can be checked is 6w, and the price converted into thousands of characters is 3.3 yuan. But generally, the number of words in undergraduate graduation theses is between 5000-15000. Excluding duplication checking with classmates, the price per thousand characters under normal demand is 13.2 yuan (calculated as 15000 words).

Compared with the quotation in the third-party market, the duplicate checking quotation in formal channels such as HowNet, Wanfang, VIP and Longyuan is stable. It is reported that its quotation is positively related to the accumulation of data resources, the total category and quantity of academic literature included, the number of journals, and the quantity and quality of exclusive journals. On the whole, most of the repeated quotation through formal channels is within the range of 1.5 yuan/1000 words - 3 yuan/1000 words. It can be expected that after HowNet opens its personal duplicate checking service this time, it will play a greater role in attacking the gray industrial chain of online duplicate checking service.

The number of free duplicate checks for graduate dissertations has increased to 3 per capita

The reporter also noted that this time, the direct duplicate checking service is open to individuals, and does not include graduate dissertations. In its answers to frequently asked questions, HowNet claimed that, in view of the particularity of the management of graduate dissertations, as well as the differences in disciplines, school running levels and management policies among schools, HowNet continued to provide graduate students with free duplication checking services through graduate schools, and the number of free dissertations increased from 1.5 times per capita to 3 times per capita.

The reporter learned from the relevant person in charge of CNKI that CNKI is expanding its opening scope, providing the internal institutions of the university (such as libraries, scientific research management departments of colleges and departments, etc.) with a service mode of unlimited times per year. As a formal channel in the university, CNKI provides postgraduate students with the service of checking duplicate dissertations to meet the research needs of graduate groups. In particular, the detection and comparison database of each school includes the joint comparison database and the internal paper database. Therefore, the detection results in the personal duplication checking system may not be completely consistent with the detection results of the graduate training management organization (graduate school).

The person in charge also told the reporter that in the future, HowNet will also launch a new product of individual duplicate checking service that serves the education of scientific research integrity, academic standard training and the improvement of scientific research writing ability, so as to better serve the academic growth and development of individuals and promote the construction of academic integrity.

Academic integrity standards still need to be built by many parties

HowNet has opened personal duplicate checking service, providing academic detection channels for users to a certain extent. However, HowNet also said that it is still necessary to be cautious that the duplication checking system is a computer software service tool. Its main role is to provide clues about suspected plagiarism, plagiarism, multiple submissions of one manuscript and other behaviors through the analysis of text repeatability, to help find the innovation of literature and promote the protection of original literature achievements. The advantage of the computer software system is that it can provide the reviewers with the number and speed of comparison that can not be achieved manually through intelligent algorithms based on massive academic documents, so as to prevent missing inspections and plays a certain auxiliary role in curbing academic misconduct. "However, the results of the duplication checking system cannot simply replace the role of peer reviews such as tutors, dissertation defense committees, academic committees, and reviewers in checking academic standards and academic norms."

"On the guidance of tutors, we need to reposition and return. To play a good role as a tutor, no technical means can replace the ideological and constructive topic selection. We need to play the role of people and technology together. On the other hand, we hope that HowNet will provide more inclusive services, while taking into account the public welfare and market, and serve academia, university research institutes and students more." The person in charge of a graduate school of a university pointed out that academic integrity standards still need to be built in many ways, hoping to achieve win-win results in many ways and jointly realize the benign development of academic ecology.

The relevant person in charge of HowNet said that to solve and curb academic misconduct, it is necessary to establish an academic governance system in which all parties participate, and comprehensively manage it through policy guidance, system construction, scientific research integrity education, academic standard training, etc. The platform and users should jointly make the paper review service more humanized and standardized, so as to ensure the basic quality of academic papers and scientific research achievements. Most importantly, individuals need to build the ideological foundation of scientific research integrity from the perspective of ideological cognition, and consciously prevent various academic misconduct in scientific research activities.

Yangcheng Evening News reporter Chen Liang