IEEE pulls 1,417 papers in a single day in record retraction over fake-authorship trade
The world’s largest engineering publisher has pulled more than 1,400 conference papers in a single day, in what research-integrity specialists say is the biggest bulk retraction ever by a scholarly publisher.
The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) announced on 28 October that it had retracted about 1,400 papers from its IEEE Xplore digital library after a review found they broke its publication rules. Nature’s news team verified that at least 1,417 retraction notices were issued on 23 October alone.
Every paper had been flagged by a study published this month in the journal Accountability in Research. The researchers traced them to “paper mills” — businesses that sell authorship slots on academic papers, often low-quality or fake. They found 4,407 adverts selling authorships on more than 200 social-media channels, including Telegram, WhatsApp and Facebook, and matched 2,062 IEEE papers, in 366 conference proceedings from 2021 to 2026, to the adverts. A first-author slot cost $43 to $400, the study found, and a last-author slot $11 to $200. The retraction notices say the articles “may have been offered for sale”.
Study co-author Anna Abalkina, of the Free University of Berlin, told Nature: “It is unbelievable. They’re so fast.” Nature’s analysis found that 1,622 of the 2,062 flagged papers have now been retracted.
Why it matters
A pull of this size shows how industrial the trade in fake authorship has become. Conference papers are published quickly, are often indexed in scholarly databases and can be cited by other researchers, so unreliable work can spread before anyone notices. IEEE is a frequent target because of its scale — more than 533,000 members in 190 countries, and around 350,000 conference papers published a year. IEEE noted the affected articles were less than 0.06% of its conference publications over six years, but a fraction of a percent of the world’s largest engineering publisher still means thousands of papers.
What happens next
Around 440 of the papers flagged by the study have not yet been retracted, so further pulls are likely in the coming weeks. IEEE says it has expanded its screening tools and is working with industry bodies and volunteer experts to strengthen peer review, and the study’s authors want more oversight of the conferences it sponsors. Other publishers will be watching: the now-defunct Hindawi retracted more than 9,500 articles by the end of 2023.
This article is for general information and education only. It is not legal or financial advice.
Sources
- https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-026-03455-8 (Nature, 30 October 2026)
- https://www.ieee.org/about/news/2026/ieee-champions-research-integrity (IEEE, 28 October 2026)
