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.
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