Science journal publisher Springer to take down ‘nonsense’ papers
Publisher of science journals Springer said it would scrap 16 papers from its archives after they were revealed to be computer-generated gibberish. The fake papers had been submitted to conferences on computer science and engineering whose proceedings were published in specialised, subscription-only publications, Springer said on Thursday.
Publisher of science journals Springer said it would scrap 16 papers from its archives after they were revealed to be computer-generated gibberish.
The fake papers had been submitted to conferences on computer science and engineering whose proceedings were published in specialised, subscription-only publications, Springer said on Thursday.
"We are in the process of taking down the papers as quickly as possible," the Germany-based publisher said in a statement.
"This means that they will be removed, not retracted, since they are all nonsense."
Springer added: "We are looking into our procedures to find the weakness that could allow something like this to happen, and we will adapt our processes to ensure that it does not happen again."
The lapse was exposed by French computer scientist Cyril Labbe of the Joseph Fourier University in Grenoble, France.
He also spotted more than 100 other "nonsense" papers unwittingly published by the New York-based Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers, the journal Nature reported.