IEEE Retracts 1,417 Conference Papers Linked to Paper-Mill Advertisements

The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) has retracted 1,417 papers from its conference proceedings in one batch after an outside study linked them to paper mills, businesses that sell authorship slots on research papers. IEEE announced the action in an October 28 statement. Nature reported on October 30 that its news team had verified the retractions were made on October 23, and research-integrity specialists told the journal it is the largest single bulk retraction by any scholarly publisher.

What IEEE said

IEEE said it had retracted approximately 1,400 papers from its IEEE Xplore Digital Library after an investigation found they violated its publication principles, according to Research Information's report of the statement. The review followed an external study, and IEEE said it used new technology and advanced screening methods in the review, with the retractions coming within months of it becoming aware of the concerns.

The organization put the affected papers at less than 0.06% of its conference publications over a six-year period. It publishes more than 350,000 conference papers a year. The statement did not identify the papers. Nature reported that the retraction notices say the articles "may have been offered for sale."

"Trust is at the heart of scholarly publishing," said Steven Heffner, IEEE's chief publications officer. W. Clem Karl, IEEE vice president for publication services and products, said "protecting the integrity of the scholarly record is a responsibility shared across the entire research community."

The study behind the retractions

The external study is by Anna Abalkina, Marie Kunešová, Yagmur Ozturk and Solal Pirelli. It was first posted as a preprint in April and was published this month in the journal Accountability in Research. The authors collected publication offers covering more than 4,000 paper titles or topics from more than 200 social media channels and matched them to 2,062 papers in 366 IEEE conference proceedings. According to the preprint, those papers have more than 7,500 co-authors from over 4,000 affiliations in 56 countries.

According to Nature's account of the study, the advertised prices ranged from $43 to $400 for a first-author slot and from $11 to $200 for a last-author slot. Of 109 IEEE-sponsored conferences with five or more matching papers, 95 took place in India.

"It is unbelievable. They're so fast," Abalkina, a social scientist at the Free University of Berlin who studies research integrity, told Nature.

How many have been pulled

An analysis by Nature's news team found that IEEE has now retracted 1,622 of the 2,062 papers the study flagged, and suggests IEEE has retracted nearly 3,000 papers so far in 2026. The analysis cross-checked the study's list against the Problematic Paper Screener, a database created by computer scientist Guillaume Cabanac at the University of Toulouse.

IEEE has made bulk retractions before. In 2015 it retracted more than 1,200 papers and abstracts from a single 2011 conference, and last year it retracted more than 1,700 conference articles, Nature reported.

Why conferences are exposed

According to Nature, local organizing committees run submissions and peer review for IEEE-sponsored conferences, and IEEE then publishes the proceedings. Abalkina told Nature that conference submissions do not face the same integrity checks as IEEE journal submissions and are quick to publish. Kunešová, a co-author of the study at the University of West Bohemia, said "IEEE should implement more oversight over the different sections" it publishes, particularly conferences.

IEEE did not answer Nature's questions before publication and referred the journal to its public statement.

Sources

• Nature, October 30, 2026: Record-breaking retraction: scholarly publisher pulls 1,400 conference papers on one day
• Research Information, October 30, 2026: IEEE retracts approximately 1,400 papers following integrity review
• Abalkina, Kunešová, Ozturk and Pirelli, arXiv preprint: Opening Pandora's box: Paper mills in conference proceedings

Photo: Bound journal volumes on library shelves (illustrative; not IEEE publications). Photo by SKopp, via Wikimedia Commons, licensed CC BY 4.0.