Fudan loses access to academic database

Fudan University temporarily lost its access to the American Chemical Society (ACS) publications database after a student downloaded an excessive number of articles, local media reported Tuesday.

It wasn't the first time that Fudan University has lost access to one of its expensive academic databases due to careless students, who lack knowledge about intellectual property rights.

Fudan University spends about 12 million yuan ($1.93 million) a year on academic databases, which its students use to download academic journal articles for free from its digital library, according to a report in the Shanghai Morning Post.

The university did not reveal how much it pays for a subscription to the ACS database, but for individual members of the society, articles cost $2 each when purchased in bulk.

The ACS pulled the plug on Fudan's access after a doctoral candidate at the School of Life Sciences downloaded more than 200 academic articles within a single hour on November 9, the report said.

"The articles in the database are only supposed to be used for research," said an employee at CNKI, a Chinese Academic Database. "No one can read 200 articles in one hour. Excessive downloads can threaten the database provider's intellectual property because the downloader may be trying to steal and sell the articles."

Fudan University's library requires students to limit downloads to fewer than 100 articles an hour to avoid losing access, according to its website.

Excessive downloading is not uncommon at Fudan University. For the ACS database alone, the university has its access suspended three or four times each year, a library employee told the Global Times. "We brief freshmen on the digital library rules as soon as they come to the university," the employee said. "An announcement about the rules pops up whenever they log into the digital library, but most students just ignore it."

Many students know little about intellectual property, said Ren Haiyong, an intellectual property attorney. However, universities should not put too much blame on students because it is their responsibility to educate students about the issue. "I advise universities to teach students about intellectual property rights in their compulsory law courses," he said.