• dustcommie [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
      16·
      1 year ago

      Think you still will be using scihub. Unless I am missing something (or only correct inside China or need an account) it seems like “just another” aggregator (which is useful, don’t get me wrong) and doesn’t really make anything available that wasn’t already open access. Although being able to focus on some Chinese output, like thesis, is nice and things like that might get missed by other services (idk)

      • AernaLingus [any]@hexbear.netEnglish
        12·
        1 year ago

        Just poking around the site, it seems to be analogous to PubMed (minus the medical focus), serving as a searchable database for papers, hosting abstracts and metadata for those papers, and linking to journals for the full text versions (sometimes hosting the papers directly if they are open access). I hope we get some more in-depth coverage in English soon (the Sixth Tone article the OP’s image is from isn’t very detailed); one of the things I’m wondering is if the main purpose is to serve as a PubMed-like search engine/aggregator to make it easy to find things (still admirable if that wasn’t possible for some of the Chinese papers or if those services weren’t easily accessible for those in China) or if it aims to become a primary host for papers going forward. The article mentions that the only comparable service was provided by CNKI in extortionate fashion, but it’s still not clear to me whether CNKI operated as a mere paywall to its search database (to which PubScholar provides an immediate free alternative) or if it also served as a paywall to the papers themselves (and if so, does PubScholar now provide free access to some of those papers?).

        Whatever the case, this seems to be a worthy endeavor and I look forward to hearing about how it continues to develop!

        Oh, also PSA for those using uBlock Origin: don’t know if it’s just my particular blocklists or what, but the main navigation section at the top of the page (everything between the header and the four featured articles in this screenshot) is completely absent for me with blocking enabled. Weirdly, when I click on the extension it doesn’t actually report that anything has been blocked, so it must be the cosmetic filters at play.

  • loathsome dongeater@lemmygrad.mlEnglish
    15·
    1 year ago

    I can only find English language coverage of this on xinhua and sixthtone.

    CNKI, known as Zhiwang in China and established in 1999 with backing from Tsinghua University, has faced regulatory challenges since last December.

    The platform was fined 87.6 million yuan ($11.97 million) by Chinese regulators for “abusing its market dominance,” representing 5% of its 2021 domestic revenue. And last month, following an extensive yearlong investigation, the database was penalized again [for USD 6.8 million] for illegally collecting users’ personal information.