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One of the world’s largest professional societies of scientists and engineers has withdrawn 1,417 conference papers in one go.
The decision was announced in an October 28 news release from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) in New York. It is the largest mass retraction published by a scientific publisher, research integrity specialists said. Nature.
The IEEE announcement did not identify the affected articles. However, NatureThe press team verified that the IEEE removed at least 1,417 papers from the October 23 conference. All have already been identified by a study1 of research work that can be traced to paper mill advertisements on social media – companies that sell authorship placements for papers that, in turn, often depict low-quality or false research.
This study – originally published in April as a preprint2 and published this month in the journal Responsibility in research – listed 2,062 articles published in 366 IEEE conference proceedings between 2021 and 2026.
According to the IEEE statement, “after the irregularities were identified through an external review,” the publisher conducted a thorough review and found that the articles violated “the IEEE Publishing Principles.”. The retraction notices for the 1,417 journals removed last week, and for 7 others that do not have a clear retraction date, state that the items “may have been offered for sale.”
“It’s incredible. They are so fast,” says Anna Abalkina, an integrity researcher and social scientist at the Free University of Berlin who co-authored the work. Responsibility in research study.
NatureThe news team’s analysis also found that 1,622 of the 2,062 articles flagged by the study for their links to paper mills have now been removed by the IEEE. Overall, IEEE has retracted nearly 3,000 papers so far in 2026, according to analysis nature suggests the press team.
The analysis cross-referenced Abalkina’s dataset with a database called Problematic Paper Screener that identifies articles removed from publishers’ websites. It was created by computer scientist Guillaume Cabanac of the University of Toulouse, France.
This is not the first time that the IEEE has published articles en masse. In 2015, it removed more than 1,200 articles and abstracts from a single 2011 conference. Other media outlets did so as well. Hindawi, a now-defunct London subsidiary of publisher Wiley, has retracted more than 9,500 articles by the end of 2023, including 567 retractions in one go, a Wiley spokesperson said. Nature.
Paternity for sale
In their study, Abalkina and colleagues recorded 4,407 advertisements selling authorship on conference papers. These ads were found on over 200 social networks such as Telegram, WhatsApp and Facebook. The researchers then flagged 2,062 IEEE papers whose titles matched exactly or nearly as advertised.
The team found that, overall, prices for authorship ranged between $43 and $400 for a first-author slot and between $11 and $200 for a last-author slot. The study also shows that of the 109 IEEE-sponsored conferences that published at least five papers matching paper mill advertisements, 95 were held in India.
“Paper mills are a public market and sales offers are public on social networks. Anyone can find them. Anyone can buy. Anyone can find them,” says Abalkina.
IEEE is a frequent target of paper mills because of the nature and volume of its conferences, says Marie Kunešová, a computer scientist at the University of West Bohemia in Pilsen, Czech Republic, and co-author of the study.
The organization has more than 533,000 members in some 190 countries. It publishes approximately 250 journals and sponsors more than 2,000 conferences per year, resulting in approximately 350,000 conference papers.
Researchers must apply to the IEEE or one of its member organizations to use its name to host a conference anywhere. Conference organizers can also apply for technical sponsorship from the IEEE, which publishes the final proceedings. Local conference organizing committees manage submissions and peer review.
Submissions to conferences are not subject to the same integrity checks as submissions to IEEE journals, Abalkina says. They are “quick to publish” and often indexed in scientific databases, she adds. Kunešová thinks that “IEEE should implement more control over the different sections” it publishes, especially the conferences.
nature The news team contacted the IEEE for a response. No responses to our questions have been received at the time of publication of this article. However, a representative referred us to the public statement, which notes that the affected papers in the latest batch of retractions “represent less than 0.06% of the conference’s publications for the six-year period.”
Last year, the organization removed more than 1,700 papers from conference proceedings.
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