An engineering journal has retracted two papers after a company complained the authors of the articles used its software without a valid license.
Both retracted papers were published by Ain Shams Engineering Journal in the last couple of years by different authors based in Egypt. Both papers used FLOW-3D, software that is used to simulate the dynamics of liquids and gasses, which is developed by the firm Flow Science, Inc., in Santa Fe, N.M.
Tom Jensen, vice president of Flow Science, told Retraction Watch the firm offered the authors of both studies to legalize their version of the software by purchasing a license.
But the company didn’t receive a response, Jensen said, despite informing the researchers a retraction would be sought from the journal without a valid license. “We offer greatly reduced prices for licenses for academic institutions and we have numerous academic users around the world,” he added.
A spokesperson for Elsevier, which publishes Ain Shams Engineering Journal, said it is “each journal’s responsibility to check if software licences are valid.”
Jensen said the company came across the papers because it regularly conducts reviews of citations of its software on the internet. How the authors obtained the software in the first place is unclear, Jensen said, “but we are aware that cracked copies of our software (and many others) appear on the so-called ‘dark web’.”
This case is not the first time journals have been forced to pull articles for unlicensed uses of copyrighted work. In 2017, a scientist came under spotlight after asking for tens of thousands of dollars from researchers using his copyrighted questionnaire for research purposes, resulting in at least two teams withdrawing their papers instead of paying up. But a paper that helped form the basis of that questionnaire was retracted in 2023.
Both retraction notices, issued by the journal’s editor-in-chief, contain similar wording, including:
One of the conditions of submission of a paper for publication is that the article does not violate any Intellectual Property rights of any person or entity and that the use of any software is made under a license or permission from the software owner.
One of the retracted studies, “Investigating the peak outflow through a spatial embankment dam breach,” which was originally published in November 2022, has been cited three times, according to Clarivate’s Web of Science. It was retracted in September 2023.
Retraction Watch reached out to Ashraf Jatwary, the corresponding author of the 2022 article, who is based at Zagazig University in Egypt, for a comment but didn’t hear back.
The other retracted study, “Effect of tailwater depth on non-cohesive earth dam failure due to overtopping,” was originally published in August 2023. It was pulled last month and has so far been cited 2 times.
We also contacted Shaimaa Aman and Rabiea Nasr of Alexandria University, both corresponding authors of this study, for a comment but didn’t receive a reply.
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Interesting. I can think of all kinds of appropriate consequences for misuse of a license like that, but retraction of the paper itself? Misuse of the license doesn’t suggest the underlying findings were wrong.
I guess the argument could be that 1) unauthorized versions of the software theoretically may not generate accurate results, but also 2) as was said in the notice, “One of the conditions of submission of a paper for publication is that the article does not violate any Intellectual Property rights of any person or entity and that the use of any software is made under a license or permission from the software owner.” The journal does need to enforce the rules they have.
I tried to find data on the cost of licenses, but while they do offer free trials, they don’t seem to publish the license costs on their site. Better transparency from the company would help alleviate my suspicion that they may be extorting fees from people with bigger research budgets by making these particular authors suffer.
Many software companies do publish prices, others don’t. There is almost always large discount for academic users and institutions, compared to commercial entities (regardless of size or whether it is profitable). Sales reps are often open to some negotiation. Actually large, well funded universities are often able to negotiate favorable terms when multiple licenses are needed. I wouldn’t call this business practice “extortion.”
It’s concerning that the PDFs for both of these manuscripts are unreadable. Is the publisher trying to cover up more than a licensing dispute? Perhaps a more significant peer review problem occurred with these manuscripts.
Both PDF’s of the manuscripts are readable. No cover-ups going on here.
Both appear for me, with a large “RETRACTED” watermark on each page which does not much interfere. That doesn’t necessarily mean they will appear for everyone.
Here’s a small extract from the very complicated final URL for one of the pdfs:
…&X-Amz-Date=20241108T212156Z&X-Amz-SignedHeaders=host&X-Amz-Expires=300&X-Amz-Credential=ASIAQ3PHCVTYZVQTMONL%2F20241108%2Fus-east-1%2Fs3%2Faws4_request&…
One can see how this sort of thing might lead to different viewers seeing different things.
It is said that correct results must not be published because the software company was not paid. I assume the company is rich, copy right or not, kindness goes first, the research is for future human. Some institutions don’t pay at all for softwares, I’m disappointed that a big company can’t wave the license fees for the authors, scientists don’t make money.
The notion that all companies are rich, and undeservedly so, is ubiquitous in the academic world. I’m not a software developer, and I don’t know the specific company involved here. But I do know that they must have spent considerable time and money getting a scientific program ready for launch. A lot of companies fail. Others scrape by. Some do very well. There’s competition from other companies. They also compete with free open source software (although many researchers aren’t inclined to put in the effort to adapt it for their work). Then there’s cracked copies distributed on the web, and academic researchers don’t seem to see any issue with using it. It’s ironic, since developing scientific software requires scientific and engineering expertise, it can be crucial to the researchers’ ability to analyze their results, and yet researchers resent paying the cost. Even when the research results are used to support grants and promotions.
So a copy of this disputed program is floating around on the dark web and anyone can use it. Problem is that the inventor of the program has now demonstrably lost control of his plan to make users pay through the nose for what he thought was his intellectual property. The authors of the two papers should simply supply the journal with the source of their program, and point out that their dark web source is a) not associated with Flow Science, and b) requires no licensing fee.
Readers can make up their own minds about the value of the publications. Perhaps the reviewers should receive a slap on the wrist.
And Flow Science will realize that some licencee was so aggrieved with the price charged that he/she placed the program on the dark web.
Commercial companies are in business to sell software they develop. They don’t “think” they have intellectual property, they do. If you can’t or don’t want to pay for the product does that give you the moral right to steal it? It’s software so you may be able to do that without a trace. Does that make it different from stealing a tangible thing, like a piece of lab equipment? If your research is totally dependent on the use of commercial software, and you don’t want to pay the price, either change your research plans or write your own code to analyze your own results.
Copying and using software without the approval of the rights holders is against the law in most places, but that doesn’t mean it has anything to do with stealing a physical object.
If I steal your lab equipment, you don’t have to anymore. If I ‘steal’ your software, you still have it and can still use it.
Just because unauthorized copying and using is against the law, and stealing physical goods is against the law, doesn’t mean both are somehow equivalent.
It’s mind boggling that on a site that’s supposed to be about scientific integrity, that unauthorized copying of intellectual property isn’t seen as theft. Is it because the owner of the IP is a commercial entity? If instead of purchasing a license to their IP, you find and use a cracked copy, you are taking their product without paying for it. How do you justify theft of IP? Why is IP theft any different from theft of physical property?
And how can the company be sure that they used this software without a license? Does that mean that if I eat bread at my home and my friend gave it to me without any proof of buying it, the police will arrest me because I stole it from the supermarket? Nonsense.
Companies know the identities of the persons or organizations that license their software. A license to use the software is not a license to distribute it.
Also the analogy is flawed. If there’s a loaf of bread that was purchased, the bakery doesn’t care who or how many people eat it. No additional loaves can be created as copies from the purchased loaf of bread.
Well, you could imagine a bakery that sells you bread only with a license not to share it. If you agree to such conditions when you buy the bread, you have to stick by them.
(This is almost unheard of for bakeries. But all-you-can-eat buffets typically only give you permission to feed yourself, not to share their food with non-payers.)
The way the company handled it is just pure malice. At the very least they should have seen that people are using their software at such a level only proves fitness of purpose. That is a marketing bonus that would generate more profit. No one is condoning piracy, but there are likely just too many hidden issues here. For instance, if the authors had published “Open Access” ($1000 according to the journal website), then changes are they had a funding source, and the company could then force a retraction. This is a gifted team in Africa that’s cash-strapped. It is a situation that is all too familiar to some.
If the authors had approached the software company up front, they are likely to have been able to negotiate a deal that would have been affordable to them. Companies do this for researchers in poorer countries. But the authors didn’t do that, and didn’t respond to the company afterwards to find a solution. The notion that these researchers are doing the company a big favor by just by showing the program works is naive.
Nope. The company sets out the requirement that you need a paid license to use their software. And absent that license the use of their program is not allowed nor apparently is the publishing of any results from the program allowed. Therefore the retraction.
And if they are as “cash strapped” as you claim then they should apply to see if they qualify for a FREE 4-month academic license that the publisher of the software offers under their “Academic Program”. Located at https://www.flow3d.com/academic-program/ So there is really no reason to use an un-licensed version of this software.
Accidentally or not, the “dam breach flow” theme has surfaced in Smut Clyde’s sleuthing on transactional citations: https://pubpeer.com/publications/2ED5DDBFC6F8CE5D45BD008BC2AB8E
Interesting discussions. You guys (I am not a scientist, I am a software developer) make a big issue about plagiarism. If fact, this site is in parts about it.
But some of you find a software version of plagiarism, known as copyright violation, absolutely, 100% OK. Don’t you think you are applying double standards here?