Taiwanese Professor's Research Plagiarized and Submitted Under His Name, Suspected Retaliation

Academic Integrity Questioned as Elsevier Journal Retracts Paper After Discovery of Misappropriated Identity

A professor from the Department of Electrical Engineering at National Chung Cheng University in Taiwan, Mohamed Shaaban, has reportedly been impersonated in a plagiarism case. A paper containing plagiarized content was submitted to the journal Results in Engineering, published by Elsevier. The submission was made using a non-academic email account, and the journal has since retracted the article. However, the article remains accessible in the database, prompting Professor Shaaban to request its complete removal. The university has called for an investigation into the identity of the submitter and the peer-review process.

The journal's website issued a statement acknowledging that after publication, they discovered the author had used a suspicious email address, which was not associated with Professor Mohamed Shaaban's account. They contacted National Chung Cheng University and confirmed that the professor had not participated in the submission of this article. Due to the confirmed unreliability of the author's identity, the integrity of the article and the investigation results were compromised. The journal expressed deep apologies for the incident and has since retracted the paper.