Given a rising variety of publishing misconduct allegations, IEEE in 2022 created the Publishing Ethics Crew as a centralized division to help in dealing with claims. The group additionally works to extend the group’s visibility within the broader publishing ethics space and helps IEEE volunteers write new insurance policies.
Listed here are some highlights of the workforce’s actions final yr.
New detection instruments
IEEE performed a pilot program in 2024 to combine instruments from the Worldwide Affiliation of Scientific, Technical, and Medical Publishers (STM) Integrity Hub into the peer-review workflow of IEEE Entry. The multidisciplinary, absolutely gold-open-access journal publishes analysis outcomes throughout all IEEE fields of curiosity.
STM created the hub so scholarly publishers might entry a collection of built-in, business, third-party analysis integrity instruments in addition to these developed by STM Options. The instruments assist the publishing group keep away from printing problematic content material upon manuscript receipt, quite than reacting postpublication.
The brand new options embrace the Clear Skies Papermill Alarm, which helps determine probably fraudulent manuscripts at submission. One other is an integration with the PubPeer database, which permits customers to test whether or not references in a manuscript have obtained earlier PubPeer feedback or have been retracted—each of which might point out high quality or integrity points. The duplicate submissions detector can decide whether or not the identical manuscript has been submitted to a number of journals by totally different publishers, typically an indication of educational “paper mill” exercise.
Following the success of the pilot, IEEE started working final yr to increase the companies to all its periodicals. It’s anticipated that each one IEEE periodicals might be included within the Integrity Hub screening by the tip of this yr.
Elevating visibility
The workforce participated in industry-wide initiatives with STM. It additionally renewed membership in teams together with the Committee on Publication Ethics, and the workforce continued its work sponsoring and presenting at conferences.
At a panel presentation throughout the Council of Science Editors annual assembly final yr, Amanda Sulicz, supervisor of IEEE Analysis Integrity, participated within the Analysis Integrity Investigation panel session. She additionally introduced on the Standardization of Publishing Integrity Norms and Corrective Actions poster session throughout the Society for Scholarly Publishing’s annual assembly, held 28 to 30 Could 2025.
Luigi Longobardi, the IEEE Publishing Ethics and Conduct director, gave a presentation on the Communication and Collaboration With Establishments session throughout STM Innovation and Integrity Days, which befell 9 and 10 December.
IEEE was a sponsor of the Nationwide Convention on Analysis Integrity, held 20 to 22 Could 2025, and the Worldwide Congress on Peer Evaluate and Scientific Publication, held 3 to five September.
Ethics stories
The workforce is chargeable for monitoring ethics-related complaints for all IEEE publications, together with articles printed in periodicals and convention proceedings. When complaints concerning an article’s integrity are obtained, both by way of e-mail at pub-ethics@ieee.org or the nameless ethics reporting line, the workforce works with IEEE volunteers to open a case, examine the criticism, and resolve the matter.
Final yr 591 circumstances had been opened, a 56 % enhance over 2024. Of the 591 stories, 317 had been closed and 274 are nonetheless below investigation. Of the complaints, 88 % had been research-related, together with points with plagiarism, AI-generated textual content, and falsification of—or unauthorized use of—knowledge. The opposite 12 % concerned alleged misconduct by editors, reviewers, and convention organizers.
The complexity of the reported circumstances has expanded. An rising variety of the complaints cope with a couple of article or difficult conditions corresponding to editorial misconduct or peer-review manipulation.
Convention publications
For the second consecutive yr, the workforce participated within the joint IEEE Publication Companies and Merchandise Board/IEEE Conferences Committee’s advert hoc committee on convention publication high quality. The committee is tasked with analyzing and reviewing problematic convention papers and enhancing high quality screening of articles previous to publication to detect integrity points corresponding to plagiarism and tortured phrases. The committee additionally updates academic modules on organizing and managing conferences.
As a part of the evaluation course of, the committee centered on convention articles that contained tortured phrases, that are nonstandard English expressions which are imprecise or misguided and provides the impression of technical jargon.
Lots of the articles reviewed by the advert hoc committee had been recognized by the Problematic Paper Screener, a free on-line device that makes use of utility programming interfaces to display screen papers printed on-line for probably problematic content material, corresponding to tortured phrases, machine-generated content material (SCIgen or Mathgen, for instance), or references to retracted content material.
The advert hoc committee was chargeable for reviewing and recommending the retraction of greater than 1,700 problematic convention articles final yr.
Case research
From the circumstances the workforce reviewed, IEEE discovered priceless info to assist replace its publishing insurance policies and finest practices.
Listed here are examples of two anonymized circumstances reported to the workforce final yr.
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