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The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), one of the world’s leading professional societies for scientists and engineers, has retracted 1,417 conference papers in a single action. Research-integrity experts say it is the largest single retraction issued by an academic publisher.
IEEE announced the move in a statement on October 28. The announcement did not identify the affected papers, but Nature confirmed that IEEE withdrew at least 1,417 conference documents on October 23. All had previously been identified by researchers, and some of the findings could be traced to social-media advertisements from paper mills—businesses that sell authorships on papers, often resulting in low-quality or fabricated research being published.
The papers were listed in a study first posted as a preprint in April and published this month in Accountability in Research. The study identified 2,062 papers published in 366 IEEE conference proceedings between 2021 and 2026.2
IEEE said that, after an external investigation identified misconduct, it carried out a comprehensive review and found that the papers violated its “IEEE Publishing Principles.” Retraction notices for all 1,417 papers withdrawn last week, along with seven others for which no clear retraction date was available, say that the papers “may have been put up for sale.”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 led 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An analysis by Nature’s reporting team found that 1,622 of the 2,062 papers linked to paper mills in the study have now been retracted by IEEE.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 the number of IEEE papers retracted in connection with the investigation could approach 3,000 in 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This is not the first time IEEE has withdrawn a large number of papers.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 articles by the end of 2023, including 567 in a single action, a Wiley spokesperson told Nature.
Authors on sale
In their study, Abarkina and her colleagues recorded 4,407 advertisements offering authorships on conference papers. The advertisements appeared across more than 200 social-media channels, including Telegram, WhatsApp and Facebook. The researchers then flagged 2,062 IEEE papers whose titles matched, or closely resembled, those advertised in the paper-mill listings.
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 included five or more papers matching 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 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 approximately 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 conference proceedings. Local organizing committees handle submissions and peer review.
Conference submissions do not undergo 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 “the 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 publication’s questions by the time this article was published. A representative instead pointed to an official statement saying that the affected papers “represent less than 0.06% of conference publications over a six-year period.”
Last year, IEEE retracted more than 1,700 articles from conference proceedings.
Conferences covered
Source: www.nature.com
