Academic Papers Yanked After Authors Found To Have Used Unlicensed Software (theregister.com) 48
An academic journal has retracted two papers because it determined their authors used unlicensed software. The Register: Elsevier's Ain Shams Engineering Journal withdrew two papers exploring dam failures after complaints from Flow Science, the Santa Fe, New Mexico-based maker of a computational fluid dynamics application called FLOW-3D.
"Following an editorial investigation as a result of a complaint from the software distributor, the authors admitted that the use of professional software, FLOW-3D program for the results published in the article, was made without a license from the developer," a note from the journal's editor-in-chief explains.
"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."
"Following an editorial investigation as a result of a complaint from the software distributor, the authors admitted that the use of professional software, FLOW-3D program for the results published in the article, was made without a license from the developer," a note from the journal's editor-in-chief explains.
"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."
Makes sense (Score:2)
It's a breach of professional ethics, no?
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Academics don't have time and often don't have the funding either. Commercial companies are a bit more careful, though they can be quite lax about licensing too.
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This doesn't make the researcher's conclusions wrong, but rather casts doubt into their professional ethics.
Often it's just sloppy book-keeping, and it shouldn't be the job of engineers and scientists to monitor software licenses; cheaper clerks and admins can do that. Hanlon's razor.
If no fault is found, hopefully they'd be allowed to back-pay the licensing fees, publicly apologize, and then be allowed to finally publish the research.
Typo correction (Score:1)
"This doesn't make the researchers' conclusion wrong..."
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Oh if that were true. Not the looking after clerical stuff, the being cheaper.
Re: Makes sense (Score:1)
Re:Makes sense (Score:5, Interesting)
Mononymous writes:
It's a breach of professional ethics, no?
Yes, however, my considered opinion is Elsevier is more concerned about their monopoly rents cartel than anything else. They are paying lip service to "ethics" in the name of their own rapine [techdirt.com] of [techdirt.com] tax payer funded [techdirt.com] research. [techdirt.com]
Elsevier, again in my opinion, is the spirtual sib of Disney and TicketBastard with none of the cuddly cuteness of Hannable Lecter or Genghis Khan, nor the insightful intelligence of Daffy Duck or Goofy.
Re:Makes sense (Score:4, Funny)
Mononymous writes:
It's a breach of professional ethics, no?
Yes, however, my considered opinion is Elsevier is more concerned about their monopoly rents cartel than anything else. They are paying lip service to "ethics" in the name of their own rapine [techdirt.com] of [techdirt.com] tax payer funded [techdirt.com] research. [techdirt.com]
Elsevier, again in my opinion, is the spirtual sib of Disney and TicketBastard with none of the cuddly cuteness of Hannable Lecter or Genghis Khan, nor the insightful intelligence of Daffy Duck or Goofy.
Take it back. No one should sully Daffy Duck's good name by associating it with Goofy! YOU BASTARD!
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Re: Makes sense (Score:2)
Re: Makes sense (Score:2)
Considering they likely pirated their text books... should we take away their degrees?
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Not really. The legitimacy of intellectual property is debatable and therefore so is the ethics of recognizing and respecting it.
Elsevier has a small conflict of interest (Score:5, Insightful)
Elsevier are very susceptible to losing money through copyright breaches, and so put requirements on their authors' payment of other companies' licencing fees.
In principle, a publisher worries about false statements or the use of error-prone LLMs. Either of those lower the quality of the articles and reflect to the journal's discredit.
In this case they did an add-on, for the benefit of their bothers in industry. Not illegal, but definitely self-dealing.
So the science doesn't matter (Score:3)
All that matters is that someone makes money
Not surprising
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One of the key tenants of modern science is ethical obligations, that includes not breaching IP or other rights. Their actions are not an example of good science.
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*tenets - if only Slashdot had a preview function.
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Don't worry about it. I'm still embarrassed by a flaunt/flout mixup I made a decade and a half ago.
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if only Slashdot had a preview function.
It does. It's right there to the left of the "Submit" button.
It's difficult (Score:2)
Do you ignore the science and discourage unethical behavior, or do you ignore the unethical behavior because of the science?
I think it comes down to judgement calls - how valuable is the science, how great is the ethical breach? Can the breach be corrected or an alternative punishment administered that will act as a suitable deterrent?
A blanket rule enforced without thought is not the optimal solution.
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You have to enforce ethical breaches -100% of the time. If it is curable, great: resubmit. If someone else wants to replicate the work (minus the ethics breach) and submit their own paper the science can live on without the original scientists getting the credit. Too bad, so sad. The science will go on.
We cannot accept breach of ethics. It is a slippery slope that leads to... Dr Mengele.
It's a shame (Score:3)
In the flood of bogus and faked papers flooding many journals these guys (who have not been implicated in any bad science) couldn't bother to buy the tools they used.
Yeah, this is pricey Fluid Dynamics modeling software, but if that is the software needed to do the job, then funding to buy the software is just another piece of the funding you need to obtain to do your research.
Interestingly, Flow-3D offers free licenses for academic research, I am not sure how stringent the application process is, but even without that licensing appears to be in the single digit thousands per year, which is a heck of a lot cheaper than a lot of technical software.
Not sure who these guys were, or how brilliant their science is, but they definitely need to get someone to track the nuts and bolts of their operation and do some basic asset tracking.
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Put it on Sci-Hub (Score:5, Funny)
Sci-Hub will publish it, and they won't even charge for access.
Why punish the researchers? (Score:2)
Why punish the researchers? It's the software developer's job to give their software a license, nobody else can pick a license for it.
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You are being factitious, no? Hard to tell.
Elsevier must die (Score:4, Insightful)
Academic publishers shouldn't be copyrighting submitted papers, which just summarize research in progress. Journals were once the only way that researchers could publish their work, but now taht open-source servers can do this so much more efficiently, journals and their proprietary rules can go to the hell they deserve.
Different conclusions? (Score:3, Insightful)
Proud pirate use of commercial software. Seen it. (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, they give me a build for 1200 Solaris instances for a top-3 US banking customer. In the build instructions it tells me to install F-Secure's version of SSH. I was like "da fuq?" since OpenSSH was free and I had already built and tested Solaris packages for it. Nonetheless, I get talked down to by the other sysadmins and the sales guys "Don't install that fucking freeware garbage. Do as your told for once." So, I slink off and scratch my head for a second at the build instructions. They had only once license! I thought "maybe it's a site license". So, I simply called F-Secure and asked. I got the account rep for our megacorporation and they were very eager to tell me that they'd only given one test/dev free license to the very same sales asshole who told me to STFU and install F-Secure.
So, after being hazed for questioning anything, I was a bit pissed. I happened to know a guy on our legal team (lawyer) and I went to him and told him what was going on. I remember saying "I don't want to be XXX's pirate monkey bitch." He was absolutely horrified and got his boss from back East on the phone. When this guy heard my story he want absolutely ballistic. He told me to loop him into ALL the work being done for this bank and narc off anyone pulling anything else like that. He also asked for all my communication with F-Secure. Once I'd sent it, he had me sign an affadavit attesting to what I'd been asked to do verbally and in writing by various folks. About five days after I'd turned all that over, I get called into my (worthless idiot) boss's office. He was pretty angry that I'd narc'd off the sales guy (a golfing buddy of his). I was suspicious and I recorded the conversation (one party state). I told him that bragging how much you can do with stolen software is like drag racing in a stolen car. Sure, it's fast, but it's not fucking yours! Then I turned that recording over to legal, too.
At the seven day mark three people got fired for this bullshit and I wasn't one of them. I almost got fired for dropping by the sales guy's office and asking him if he needed any help carrying out his boxes of stuffed animals and toy cars.
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That's awesome. I'm glad the legal and other higher ups supported you and did the right thing.
Even at my tiniest shit hole startup I always made sure we either bought the right number of licenses or used something free. Management never once told me to do something illegal or unethical. They just added it to the budget.
And really, wtf were those guys thinking being at a fucking huge 3 letter Big Blue company and not just buying a site license? Stupids deserved to be canned.
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It should be otherwise around (Score:2)
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How many? (Score:2)
Yeah grow up and don't pirate software (Score:2)
If you don't want people using *your* work without proper attribution maybe don't do it to other people either.
RETRACTED is just a watermark of shame (Score:2)
Re: RETRACTED is just a watermark of shame (Score:2)
Interesting aspect.
I wonder if the discredit can have dire secondary consequences of a failing dam because this paper now is considered not trustworthy.
how did they know? (Score:2)
"a complaint from the software distributor" how the heck did the software developer know that the software wasn't licensed... the researchers could have just as easily used a colleagues licensed system...
papers often take years to retract... written with false/fudged data, after multiple independent people confirm the data has been fudged... but a call from a software dev shop gets two papers investigated, and pulled in a heart beat.
Those ethical considerations are really unbiased. /s