‘Cerebral torment’: IOP retracts nearly 100 conference papers for tortured phrases

IOP Publishing has withdrawn nearly 100 papers from its conference proceedings due to the presence of "tortured phrases." These phrases are convoluted rephrasings that often render the articles incomprehensible, designed to fool plagiarism detection tools. For instance, instead of "smart grids" and "smart homes," one paper used "savvy lattices" and "shrewd homes."

The majority of retractions pertain to three of the publisher's proceedings: Journal of Physics: Conference Series, Conference Series: Earth and Environmental Science, and Conference Series: Materials Science and Engineering. In August 27, investigators discovered that the papers contained "a number of nonsensical phrases that feature throughout the paper," making them difficult to understand.

Among the retractions, a 2021 Materials Science and Engineering paper on detecting brain tumors used "cerebral torment" instead of "headache." Another retractions from 2021 published in Journal of Physics used "armada the board" in place of "fleet management." Most authors either "neither agree nor disagree with the retraction" or said they "would welcome receiving the authors' version of events."

IOPP has retracted over a thousand papers for tortured phrases, according to Guillaume Cabanac, a computer scientist at the University of Toulouse in France and a creator of the Problematic Paper Screener. Since the publication of these papers, the publisher has "strengthened our editorial and peer review processes," including enhanced submission technology, expanding the specialist team, and strengthening the Research Integrity team.

The Problematic Paper Screener has flagged additional papers from the same journals that have yet to be retracted, including one with the phrase "flag to clamor" instead of "signal to noise" and another that uses "brilliant gadget" instead of "smart device."