Stob latest: IEEE flags dodgy paper

After a series of emails with IEEE board member and the institute's director of products and services, Evan Butterworth, we received this statement:

First, after a review of IEEE publication policies and procedures, we've determined that it would be appropriate to flag the article in our database. We are currently addressing that, and the flag should appear the next time we do a download of articles into the database - some time within the next 5 to 10 days. The flag will clearly alert researchers that the content of the article may not be reliable. I've appended the full text of the flag below my signature.

Second, it is our practice to regularly review and revise our policy manual, and we intend to consider what we have learned from this situation as part of that process.

Again, thank you for your diligence in bringing this situation more broadly to our attention. The IEEE is committed to ensuring the integrity of our scholarly publishing process, and the soundness of our research database.

And here's the new text appended to the Madanmohan and De' paper:

Notice of Violation of IEEE Publication Principles

“Open Source Reuse in Commercial Firms” by T.R. Madanmohan and Rahul De in IEEE Software, Vol. 21, Issue 6, November/December 2004, pp. 62-69

After careful and considered review of the content and authorship of this paper by a duly constituted expert committee, this paper has been found to be in violation of IEEE's Publication Principles.

This paper contains portions of original text from the sources cited below. Text from Paper 1) was reused without attribution. Text from Paper 2) was reused with attribution but without being clearly delineated from the above authors’ own text.

1) "Open-Source CMS: Prohibitively Fractured?" by Tony Byrne in CMS Watch, http://www.cmswatch.com/Feature/89-Open-Src 14 May 2003, pp 94-99

2) “The Amos Project: An Approach to Reusing Open Source Code” by Manuel Carro, Germán Puebla and Carlo Daffara in Presente y futuro de la ingeniería del software libre URJC, Madrid, May 21, 2003

As Verity noted, the paper continues to be widely cited.

Stay tuned - there's much more to follow. ®