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The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) has retracted 1,417 conference papers in a single action, in what research-integrity experts say is the largest single retraction issued by an academic publisher. The papers had been linked to suspected paper-mill activity, in which authorships on low-quality or fabricated research are offered for sale.
The IEEE, based in New York City, announced the action in a statement on October 28. The organization did not identify the affected papers. However, reporting by Nature confirmed that IEEE withdrew at least 1,417 conference papers on October 23.
All of the papers had previously been identified by researchers. Some of the findings can be traced to advertisements on social media placed by paper mills, which sell authorships on papers and can result in low-quality or fraudulent research being published.
A study first posted as a preprint in April2 and published this month in Accountability in Research listed 2,062 papers published in 366 IEEE conference proceedings between 2021 and 2026.
The IEEE said that an external investigation had identified misconduct. It then carried out a comprehensive investigation and found that the papers violated its “IEEE Publishing Principles”. Retraction notices for the 1,417 papers withdrawn last week, along with seven others whose retraction dates were unclear, say that the papers “may have been put up for sale”.
“It’s unbelievable. They’re so fast,” says Anna Abarkina, a research-integrity investigator and social scientist at the Free University of Berlin, who was involved in the Accountability in Research study.
An analysis by Nature’s reporting team found that 1,622 of the 2,062 papers linked to paper mills in the study have now been retracted by IEEE. The analysis suggests that IEEE could retract nearly 3,000 papers by 2026.
The analysis matched Abarkina’s dataset with the Problematic Paper Screener, a database that identifies papers retracted from publishers’ websites. The database was created by Guillaume Cabanac, a computer scientist at the University of Toulouse in France.
This is not the first time IEEE has withdrawn a large number of papers. In 2015, it retracted more than 1,200 papers and abstracts from a single conference held in 2011. Other publishers have also carried out large-scale retractions. Wiley’s now-defunct London-based Hindawi had retracted more than 9,500 papers by the end of 2023, including 567 in a single action, according to a Wiley spokesperson.
Authors for sale
In their study, Abarkina and her colleagues recorded 4,407 advertisements offering authorship of conference papers for sale. The advertisements appeared on more than 200 social-media channels, including Telegram, WhatsApp and Facebook. The researchers then flagged 2,062 IEEE papers whose titles exactly or closely matched those in the advertisements.
The researchers found that prices ranged from $43 to $400 for first-author positions and from $11 to $200 for last-author positions. Of the 109 IEEE-sponsored conferences that had five or more papers matching the paper-mill advertisements, 95 were held in India.
“Paper mills are open markets, and sales offers are published on social media. Anyone can find it. Anyone can buy. Anyone can track it,” says Abarkina.
Marie Knešová, a computer scientist at the University of West Bohemia in Pilsen, Czech Republic, and a co-author of the study, says that IEEE is often targeted by paper mills because of the nature and scale of its conference activities.
IEEE has more than 533,000 members in approximately 190 countries. It publishes around 250 journals and sponsors more than 2,000 conferences each year, producing approximately 350,000 conference papers.
Researchers must apply to IEEE or one of its member organizations to use the IEEE name when hosting a conference. Conference organizers can also apply for IEEE technical sponsorship, under which IEEE publishes the final proceedings. Local organizing committees handle submissions and peer review.
Conference submissions are not subject to the same integrity checks as submissions to IEEE journals, Abarkina says. They are often “quickly published” and indexed in academic databases, she adds. Knešová says that “IEEE should have more oversight of the various sections it publishes, especially its conferences.”
Nature asked IEEE for a response, but the organization had not answered the questions by the time this article was published. A representative instead referred Nature to an official statement saying that the affected papers “represent less than 0.06% of conference publications over a six-year period”.
IEEE retracted more than 1,700 papers from conference proceedings last year.
Conferences covered
Source: www.nature.com