The tip came from the leadership of another scientific conference.
Did the Association for Computing Machinery know that they had published the proceedings of a conference with essentially the same name as that organization, IEEE, on the same dates, in the same venue, and with lots of overlapping authors?
The two versions of the meeting – the International Conference on Information Management and Technology (ICIMTech) – both allegedly happened in Jakarta, Indonesia from Aug. 19-20, 2021, the tipster told ACM.
When ACM dug deeper, Scott Delman, the organization’s director of publications, told us, they saw something that looked familiar because of an investigation that led to a mass retraction of conference proceedings months earlier: A company in China billing itself as a conference organizer had handled all of the peer review.
In the earlier case, involving the (unintentionally) ironically named Information Hiding and Information Processing (IHIP) conference in 2018, Delman said ACM had received what he called an anonymous allegation that one of the papers had been generated by a computer – a subject we’ve certainly covered before.
“Clearly, the allegation was credible,” Delman told Retraction Watch. “We went to the conference organizers and asked, ‘How did peer review not catch this?’”
The conference co-chairs and program committee co-chairs claimed that they “were not involved in any way in the peer review of that paper or other papers submitted to the conference,” Delman said. The co-chairs said they were only responsible for securing a venue and giving talks. (More on that in a moment.) The peer review, they said, was all handled by a Beijing-based company.
ACM tracked down one of the conference organizers in Beijing named Lily Gao, who worked at the firm. Gao “informed us that the paper was peer-reviewed and after multiple requests, Gao sent a PDF of the alleged review, which appeared itself to have been falsified, based on the metadata in the PDF sent to ACM.”
“That raised questions about who was doing peer review for this conference,” Delman said. After an investigation that took “months and months,” in which none of the authors of the 26 papers allegedly presented at the conference responded, ACM came to the conclusion that it just “couldn’t trust the integrity of the peer review process for this event and was compelled to retract all of the papers published from the conference.”
ACM retracted the entire proceedings, and is “levying penalties on the conference co-chairs and program co-chairs, some of whom claim to not be responsible for the problems with the peer review process for the conference,” Delman said.
So when ACM received the tip about ICIMTech several months later, they were primed. A company had organized all of the peer review for that one, too, and following another investigation, earlier this month the association retracted that entire ICIMTech conference proceedings, too. (Evaristus Didik Madyatmadja, listed as the general chair of the IEEE and ACM versions of the conferences, did not respond to our request for comment.)
This time, that meant 323 papers, all of which now include this retraction notice:
While investigating potential publication-related misconduct in connection with the ICIMTech 2021 Conference Proceedings, serious concerns were raised that cast doubt on the integrity of the peer-review process and all papers published in the Proceedings of this Conference. The integrity of the entire Conference has been called into question. As a result, of its investigation, ACM has decided to retract the Entire Conference Proceedings and all related papers from the ACM Digital Library.
None of the papers from this Proceeding should be cited in the literature because of the questionable integrity of the peer review process for this Conference.
The move earned a “Wow” from Lonni Besançon:
This is not, however, the first such move by a publisher. The total between the two conferences – 349 – is five shy of the total that IOP Publishing retracted from two conferences earlier this year for very similar reasons.
Delman notes that the two conferences were part of ACM’s International Conference Proceedings Series, which aren’t ACM meetings but for which the association serves as publisher, much as other publishers do.
“They’re supposed to adhere to our policies and standards, but we don’t run peer review for them,” Delman said, noting that ACM runs about 200 of their own conferences each year. “Paper mills seem to have seen an opportunity to find a loophole,” he said.
ACM has made investigations like this a priority, Delman said, and has even hired a company called T&M USA for help. They have also sought the advice of Guillaume Cabanac and Cyril Labbé, who have been key players in the hunt for papers that include “tortured phrases” as well as those generated by programs such as SciGen.
Cabanac tells us: “I hope they will consider reviewing the PubPeer reports contributed in the future, too.”
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No. 055/Dean.SIS/IV/2022
Clarification of Retraction Paper at the Association of Computing Machinery (ACM) Digital Library on
the misused name of the 2021 International Conference on Information Management and Technology
(ICIMTech)
The International Conference on Information Management and Technology (ICIMTech) is an International
Conference held annually by the School of Information Systems, BINUS University. This International
Conference was conducted in collaboration with the IEEE Indonesia Section as the Technical Co-Sponsor.
ICIMTech has been held since 2016 with the following track record:
Year General Chair Publication
2016 Dr. Yohannes K https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/conhome/
7920797/proceeding
2017 Anderes Gui Ph.D https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/conhome/
8265189/proceeding
2018 Dr. S Heripracoyo https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/conhome/
8510753/proceeding
2019 Dr. Suroto Adi https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/conhome/
8837168/proceeding
2020 Dr. Tanty Octavia https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/conhome/
9203794/proceeding
2021 Dr. Evaristus D M https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/conhome/
9534863/proceeding
This Conference has never collaborated or affiliated with the Association of Computing Machinery (ACM)
publications. This conference is also never published in the ACM Digital Library. In 2021, 323 papers were
published under the name ICIMTech 21 in the ACM Digital Library
(https://dl.acm.org/doi/proceedings/10.1145/3465631), which used the Name of The Conference, The Place, and
Date of The Conference, The Name of The Committee, and The Technical Program Committee as the same as
2021 International Conference on Information Management and Technology (ICIMTech) that published in IEEE
Xplore (https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/conhome/9534863/proceeding). This is a form of plagiarism of the
Conference Name, Place and Date of Event, Committee Name, and Technical Program Committee of ICIMTech
2021.
In September 2021, the plagiarism of the Conference Name, Place and Date of Event, Committee Name, and
Technical Program Committee was reported to the Intellectual Property and Rights Manager, Association for
Computing Machinery. In October 2021, the Intellectual Property and Rights Manager contacted the General
Chair of ICIMTech 2021 (Dr. Evaristus Didik Madyatmadja) for the clarification of fraudulent papers in the
ACM Digital Library. The result of the clarification (February 2022) concludes that the Retraction will be carried
out on the publication of the ICIMTech 21 papers contained in the ACM Digital Library. All papers (323) that
were retracted from the ACM Digital Library are unrelated and are not managed by ICIMTech 2021, School of
Information Systems, Bina Nusantara University (BINUS) as the official organizer of ICIMTech in collaboration
with the IEEE Indonesia Section.
The International Conference on Information Management and Technology (ICIMTech), held by the School of
Information Systems, BINUS University, follows the standards for organizing quality international conferences,
IEEE publication standards, and academic ethics.
Jakarta, 20 April 2022
icimtech@binus.ac.id
School of Information Systems, BINUS University
Just fixing the text in the above comment:
No. 055/Dean.SIS/IV/2022Clarification of Retraction Paper at the Association of Computing Machinery (ACM) Digital Library on the misused name of the 2021 International Conference on Information Management and Technology(ICIMTech)
The International Conference on Information Management and Technology (ICIMTech) is an International Conference held annually by the School of Information Systems, BINUS University. This International Conference was conducted in collaboration with the IEEE Indonesia Section as the Technical Co-Sponsor. ICIMTech has been held since 2016 with the following track record:
Year General Chair Publication
2016 Dr. Yohannes K https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/conhome/7920797/proceeding
2017 Anderes Gui Ph.D https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/conhome/8265189/proceeding
2018 Dr. S Heripracoyo https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/conhome/8510753/proceeding
2019 Dr. Suroto Adi https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/conhome/8837168/proceeding
2020 Dr. Tanty Octavia https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/conhome/9203794/proceeding
2021 Dr. Evaristus D M https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/conhome/9534863/proceeding
This Conference has never collaborated or affiliated with the Association of Computing Machinery (ACM)publications. This conference is also never published in the ACM Digital Library. In 2021, 323 papers were published under the name ICIMTech 21 in the ACM Digital Library(https://dl.acm.org/doi/proceeding
s/10.1145/3465631), which used the Name of The Conference, The Place, and Date of The Conference, The Name of The Committee, and The Technical Program Committee as the same as2021 International Conference on Information Management and Technology (ICIMTech) that published in IEEEXplore (https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/conhome/9534863/proceeding). This is a form of plagiarism of the Conference Name, Place and Date of Event, Committee Name, and Technical Program Committee of ICIMTech2021.In September 2021, the plagiarism of the Conference Name, Place and Date of Event, Committee Name, and Technical Program Committee was reported to the Intellectual Property and Rights Manager, Association for Computing Machinery. In October 2021, the Intellectual Property and Rights Manager contacted the General Chair of ICIMTech 2021 (Dr. Evaristus Didik Madyatmadja) for the clarification of fraudulent papers in the ACM Digital Library. The result of the clarification (February 2022) concludes that the Retraction will be carried out on the publication of the ICIMTech 21 papers contained in the ACM Digital Library. All papers (323) that were retracted from the ACM Digital Library are unrelated and are not managed by ICIMTech 2021, School of Information Systems, Bina Nusantara University (BINUS) as the official organizer of ICIMTech in collaboration with the IEEE Indonesia Section. The International Conference on Information Management and Technology (ICIMTech), held by the School of Information Systems, BINUS University, follows the standards for organizing quality international conferences, IEEE publication standards, and academic ethics.
>> Delman said ACM had received what he called an anonymous allegation that one of the papers had been generated by a computer – a subject we’ve certainly covered before.
The fact is, ACM does not consider “anonymous allegations,” as per their own rules.
https://www.acm.org/publications/policies/plagiarism-overview
“Any individuals submitting a formal claim that a violation has occurred must […] identify themselves (i.e., anonymous reports are not considered) […]”
The requirement that a complainant must identify themselves is the very first requirement in the list!
In fact, reading through what it takes to file a complaint, it really makes it seem like they expect someone to do all/most of the footwork for ACM before ACM will even consider investigating.
I find that really disheartening. I remember having to learn what an argumentum ad hominem is as an undergrad, and yet even established journals don’t understand.
Although they are a member of COPE, this does not seem to be consistent with COPE guidelines.
“These are guidelines, not mandates,” – another COPE member in a correspondence where a COPE official was copied in. COPE did not object.
Speaking of a computer-generated IHIP 2018 paper, chances are, it is this one:
https://pubpeer.com/publications/D942F2EA578FAC614AC4F518DBC853
“‘Paper mills seem to have seen an opportunity to find a loophole,’ [Delman] said.”
Did the event even happen at all, I wonder? Or was it an entirely fictional event for the purpose of a paper mill publishing fake papers for its clients? I’m suspecting the latter. Allowing peer-review to be outsourced like this is a really bad idea, and I hope ACM learns that lesson.
Ah! I see it’s also entirely possible that the paper mill glommed onto an actual conference, invented the name of some other conference, and inserted some computer-generated papers into the original conference’s output for fluff/camouflage.
Why does ACM publish proceedings without any kind of verification that there even was a peer review process, or that’s it’s even a real event? It sounds like a pay to publish scheme.