Almost all the commonly used libraries belong to foreign publishing groups

"Almost every discipline has to do a lot of literature research before they start a study." Wang Zefang introduced that taking life sciences as an example, the most commonly used data document libraries in the field of life sciences are relatively concentrated,

almost all from large commercial publishing groups abroad. The biggest is Elsevier of the Netherlands, a group that publishes more than 2,500 journals and owns the biggest names. In addition,

Elsevier also publishes more than 39,000 electronic books, has the world's largest abstracts and citation databases such as Scopus, and a total of 350,000 papers are published in Elsevier journals every year.

In addition, Springer Nature and John Wiley & Sons Publishing Company is also a global publishing group that provides top services for the entire scientific research community.

The former has a long history of the world's most prestigious scientific journals, and the latter publishes journals involving chemistry, chemical engineering, life, computer engineering, mathematics, physics, etc., which is a very comprehensive large-scale publishing company.

"In addition to these data and literature sources, the Web of Science is also an important database platform for global academic information." "The impact factor to measure the academic influence of journals was proposed by Sciencenet," Wang said.

"In addition, there are additional ways to access literature data, including platforms or journals hosted by various professional organizations or societies. One of the most famous is PubMed, a free search engine provided by the US National Library of Medicine,

which can provide a comprehensive search service for biomedical papers and abstracts, and is the most widely used free search engine on the Internet. In addition, the prestigious journals sponsored by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (Science) and the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) are also important ways to access life science literature." Wang Zefang said.

"In addition to the English database, there are several Chinese literature databases commonly used, such as China National Knowledge Network (CNKI), Wanfang Database, and the National Science and Technology Books and Documentation Center."

Wang Zefang introduced that the National Science and Technology Books and Literature Center is a virtual science and technology literature information service organization.

Data library is of great significance to scientific research

Wang Zefang said helplessly, "More than 90% of the literature in the field of life science comes from these English databases, and a large number of heavy scientific research results are mostly published in important journals. Therefore, in order to grasp the latest developments in the discipline, it is necessary to consult these literatures frequently."

"Such consequences will lead to scientific research subject to people, in general, at any time may be 'stuck', a lot of scientific research will not be able to carry out; At a small level, many of the rules are made by the other side,

and their use will be limited everywhere." "We spent a lot of money subscribing to the database, but we didn't have access to the raw data. The number of people online is also limited, and beyond that, others can't access the data and have to wait for someone to log off before using it."

In addition, not all universities have sufficient research funds to purchase all important databases, and the research work of their researchers and students will be affected. Some universities may purchase some professional databases according to their strengths.

Students of other majors need to rely on the way of document delivery, through other universities or other ways to obtain documents, which is very inconvenient. "Over time, there will be an imbalance in educational resources and the development of disciplines." Wang Zefang expressed concern.

"More seriously, the database is also a platform for academic exchange, which is related to intellectual property competition and academic discourse." Wang Zefang explained that because of the influence of some well-known journals,

publishing papers here represents recognition by the academic community. So researchers try to publish their work in these journals. Whoever publishes it first will seize the intellectual property rights of the research, which is of great significance for scientific research.

Nowadays, several large foreign publishing groups monopolize the database of scientific and technological literature, and their arbitrary price increases have caused frequent conflicts between academia and publishers.

In late 2018, the University of California and Elsevier failed to agree on an open access publishing agreement and subscription pricing. After the talks broke down, Elsevier cut off the University of California's access to more than 1,000 of its journals.

Only this year did the two sides renew their cooperation. In the meantime, more than 350,000 students and faculty at the University of California can only access new papers they want to read by turning to their campus libraries, looking for legal open-access copies on the Web, or contacting the authors directly.