“They happened before I joined Uppsala University”

Zhihan Lv is not just some Chinese papermiller. This simulation researcher peddling simulated research is a Swedish professor at the Uppsala University! Well, not for long, because he was now slapped with preliminary misconduct findings, with much more to come. Lv is currently on a 6 months “leave of absence” till end of July 2024, but he already announced to resign and return to China.

Lv (who often transliterates his name as Lyu) has been employed by Uppsala University since 1 December 2021. His institutional profile lists his achievements:

“I am IEEE Senior Member, Fellow of British Computer Society, Fellow of Royal Society for Arts, Fellow of Royal Society for Public Health, Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, ACM Distinguished Speaker, five times Career-long Scientific Influence Rankings of Stanford’s Top 2% Scientists, Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellow, Clarivate Highly Cited Researcher, Elsevier Highly Cited Chinese Researcher, Research.com Computer Science in Sweden Leader Award receiver, AMiner 2023 AI 2000 Most Influential Scholar Award Honorable Mention in Internet of Things. I have contributed 500 papers including more than 100 papers on IEEE/ACM Transactions. I’m Editor-in-Chief of Internet of Things and Cyber-Physical Syste

As it happens, Smut Clyde just mentioned Lv in his very recent article, quote:

“Lv’s cartel membership manifested as invasions of the References Sections of other people’s papers – in the manner of Nicolas Cage haunting the dreams of strangers in ‘Dream Scenario‘ – which is how he first came to my attention. He went on to contribute to the Hindawi trainwreck by providing journals with a string of corrupted Special Issues.“

Papermiller corri-gendered

Alexander Magazinov notified the University of Uppsala about Lv/Lyu’s PubPeer record in October 2023. The accusations are:

• “nonsense references” and “plots are rather made-up than generated from any actual data.“
• “an instance of possible citation farming (Journal of Cleaner Production, Elsevier)”
• Papermilling for Hindawi: “Lyu is listed as academic editor on 261 papers in Complexity, 82 papers in Journal of Healthcare Engineering, 62 papers in Wireless Communications and Mobile Computing, and 16 papers in Mathematical Problems in Engineering, to a total of 421 items. Some are already retracted, for example, this, this and this.“

Here is one of Lv’s papers Magazinov reported:

Yangda Gong, Min Zhao , Qin Wang , Zhihan Lv Design and interactive performance of human resource management system based on artificial intelligence PLoS ONE (2022) doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0262398 

Here is the official English version of the investigation report by Uppsala University Board for Investigation of Deviations from Good Research Practice:

Two of Lv’s papers were investigated. His coauthor on both, Haibin Lv, affiliated at Qingdao University in China, is very likely a relative of Zhihan Lv, presumably a brother. The former is born in 1979 (source), the latter in 1984. Before coming to Sweden, Zhihan Lv was affiliated with the Qingdao University.

1. Zhihan Lv, Yuxi Li, Hailin Feng , Haibin Lv Deep Learning for Security in Digital Twins of Cooperative Intelligent Transportation Systems IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems (2022) doi: 10.1109/tits.2021.3113779 

2. Zhibo Wan , Youqiang Dong , Zengchen Yu , Haibin Lv , Zhihan Lv Semi-Supervised Support Vector Machine for Digital Twins Based Brain Image Fusion Frontiers in Neuroscience (2021) doi: 10.3389/fnins.2021.705323 

The expert invited by Uppsala to analyse Lv’s papers was the Lund University professor of communications engineering Fredrik Tufvesson. He issued this verdict on these two publications, as referenced by the report:

“Article [1] contains inconsistent results that cannot occur naturally. Article [1] and article [2] show result figures that are exactly the same, even though they should show different things and come from completely different data sets.

Such a similarity between the curves cannot be explained as natural, instead suggesting that [1], [2] or both articles contain falsified or fabricated data. Given the inconsistencies in Figure 6 of [1] and the lack of simulation parameters, simulation scenario and simulation results, it is likely that [1] is based on falsified or fabricated data. This could therefore clearly constitute a case of research misconduct.

Furthermore, [1] contains many strange references and claims that are not supported by the references cited and lacks a reference to a key tool for the study. This is a deviation from good research practice and, due to its systematic misuse of references, it can possibly be seen as a serious deviation from good research practice.”

Here is Tufvesson’s investigative report (his assessment is in English):

The Board shared the expert’s conclusion on finding evidence for research misconduct:

“There are therefore grounds for suspecting that there have been such serious deviations from good research practice that the matter should be referred to the National Board for Assessment of Research Misconduct for further investigation.”

Lv announced to resign voluntarily:

“I know that the development of the school requires the renewal of talents, and due to personal physical reasons, it is difficult for me to adapt to the Swedish winter climate, which leads to my work not going smoothly.
So I hope to take the initiative to resign in near future, so as to avoid wasting the board’s time. I will go back to China this time and actively look for a job. I hope to find a job and settle in China in the future.”

Here are some other clever explanations by Lv:

• “Pubpeer is sometimes considered as extortion site. On some social media, it was revealed that pubpeer had teamed up with Biotech to blackmail the victim. Pubpeer is not always right. They may blackmail me in the later stage.”
• “I don’t know these authors who have added me as co-authors.“

Otherwise, Lv offers to have his papers “corrigendered” (I love this word!) and insists that the fraud was committed before he came to Sweden or carries his Chinese affiliation only. He even angry writes: “Please check paper publish time instead of retraction publish time to compare to my employment time.” As if Lv didn’t use all these, in his own words, “achievements” to successfully apply for a professorship at Uppsala. Lv also asked the university to verify the identity of Alexander Magazinov, one wonders for which purpose.

Handed over to the police

This from the report is just priceless:

“On 6 March 2024, Uppsala University was contacted by an American conference organiser (see Appendix 3) with a request to verify an ethics review permit (see Appendix 4) submitted as part of preparatory work on the review process for the 2024 conference. The guidelines state that contributions submitted to the conference describing research involving human subjects must be supported by a permit from the corresponding ethics committee. During the review process, questions were raised about the validity of the ethical approval. The permit was granted to Lyu.”

The US meeting was the 2024 IEEE Conference on Virtual Reality and 3D User Interface. Stefan Eriksson, Adviser to the Vice Chancellor on good research practice, informed the conference organisers:

“In Sweden we have a national system for ethical review, see
https://etikprovningsmyndigheten.se/en/
There are no IRB’s as such and Uppsala university do not have one, neither does the ethics address (ethics@uu.se) go to one. The signee of the “approval” does not seem to be an employee here. As far as I understand the matter, this looks like a fake.”

Below is Lv’s ethics approval which he personally forged, even inventing a fictional “Ethics Coordinator” named “Anne-Marie Jackson”. Your amateur psychology guess is a good as mine on why he picked this name and why the letter has Lv’s birthday on it.

Uppsala University’s decision was (highlight mine):

“As regards the letter from the conference organisers, the document claimed to be an ethics review permit may constitute a deviation from good research practice, and may also be suspected of constituting some form of criminal conduct. The written communication has consequently been handed over to the police as part of a police report into suspected fraud.

[…] as there are reasons to suspect that the behaviour may constitute research misconduct, this written communication should also be forwarded to the National Board for
Assessment of Research Misconduct.”

Even more reason to leave Sweden. Fast.

By the way, at the same University of Uppsala:

Retractions raining

Retractions started to rain for Lv already during the investigation. Including for his own paper, in PLOS One:

Xuecong Zhang , Haolang Shen , Zhihan Lv Deployment optimization of multi-stage investment portfolio service and hybrid intelligent algorithm under edge computing PLoS ONE (2021) doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0252244 

“The PLOS ONE Editors retract this article [1] because it was identified as one of a series of submissions for which we have concerns about peer review integrity and similarities across articles. These concerns call into question the validity and provenance of the reported results. We regret that the issues were not identified prior to the article’s publication.”

Retraction 21 November 2023

These two papers were edited by Lv for PLOS One and were retracted in September 2023:

• ErLe Du , Meng Ji Analyzing the regional economic changes in a high-tech industrial development zone using machine learning algorithms PLoS ONE (2021) doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0250802 
• Fufeng Qiao Application of deep learning in automatic detection of technical and tactical indicators of table tennis PLoS ONE (2021) doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0245259

These two PLOS One papers were retracted with the same retraction notice on 6 June 2024, Zhihan Lv was editor of the first paper, his brother Haibin Lv edited the second:

• Yilin Deng , Sang-Yun Han , Jianyi Li , Jinjin Rong , Wenyu Fan , Tiancong Sun The design of tourism product CAD three-dimensional modeling system using VR technology PLoS ONE (2020) doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0244205
• Yang Li, Jiancang Xie , Rengui Jiang , Dongfei Yan Application of edge computing and GIS in ecological water requirement prediction and optimal allocation of water resources in irrigation area PLoS ONE (2021) doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0254547 

In Sweden, everything is publicly available, so here is the quoted communication between University of Uppsala and PLOS Senior Editor for Publication Ethics, Clare McFadden.

McFadden wrote to Uppsala announcing an ongoing investigation and further retractions for papers associated with Lv. She also mentioned:

“”Dr. Lv was a member of the PLOS ONE’s Editorial Board until March 2022, at which point he was removed due to the concerns described in my previous email (potential manipulation of the publication process suggestive of paper mill activity).”

And not just PLOS One divests of Lv’s papermilling. This paper was published in an Elsevier journal in a Special Issue “Internet-of-Things and Cyber-Physical System in Smart City“, edited by Lv himself, and the retracted:

Zhihan Lv , Dongliang Chen , Ranran Lou , Qingjun Wang Intelligent edge computing based on machine learning for smart city Future Generation Computer Systems (2021) doi: 10.1016/j.future.2020.08.037 

“Concern has been raised about authorship irregularities in this paper (removal and addition of authors at different stages of the publication process after submission). Changing authors after submission without permission from the editor is against the journal policy […]

In addition to authorship changes, a further issue relates to a Conflict of Interest, as the Corresponding and First Author acted as a Managing Guest Editor for this paper as part of a Special Issue.

The Corresponding Author disagrees with the retraction of the paper and provided some clarification on the authorship points, however, those explanations did not satisfactorily address all the concerns.”

Retraction 15 May 2024

As reminder, the corresponding and first author is Lv, his stated affiliation was School of Data Science and Software Engineering, Qingdao University in China. He was caught selling authorships. Next retraction achievement, in Springer:

Bin Jiang , Jiachen Yang , Na Jiang , Zhihan Lv, Qinggang Meng Quality assessment for virtual reality technology based on real scene Neural Computing and Applications (2018) doi: 10.1007/s00521-016-2828-0 

“The Editor-in-Chief and the publisher have retracted this article. The article was submitted to be part of a guest-edited issue. An investigation by the publisher found a number of articles, including this one, with a number of concerns, including but not limited to compromised editorial handling and peer review process, inappropriate or irrelevant references or not being in scope of the journal or guest-edited issue. Based on the investigation’s findings the Editor-in-Chief therefore no longer has confidence in the results and conclusions of this article.”

Retraction 14 May 2024

Here, Lv’s stated affiliation was this time Department of Computer Science, University College London, UK. Indeed, he used to be a postdoc there.

They happened before I joined Uppsala University

Now, it is good to know that the Uppsala University understands that papermilling is WRONG.

Maybe they should also tell this to their own Rector Magnificus Anders Hagfeldt, who was caught coauthoring fudged papers by known papermillers. Aside of a mild criticism from the Swedish national authority NPOF, there were exactly zero consequences. Read here:

Thing is, the worst papermilled trash was authored by Hagfeldt before he came to Uppsala, under his former affiliation of EPFL in Lausanne, Switzerland. Now observe, two papers from 2017 when Hagfeldt was active professor at EPFL:

Hadi M. Marwani , Muhammad Tariq Saeed Chani , Ekram Y. Danish , Kh.S. Karimov , Anders Hagfeldt , Abdullah M. Asiri Tandem Heterojunction Photoelectric Cell Based on Organic-Inorganic Hybrid of AlPc-H2Pc and n-Si International Journal of Electrochemical Science (2017) doi: 10.20964/2017.05.20 

Muhammad Tariq Saeed Chani , Kh.S. Karimov , Hadi M. Marwani , Ekram Y. Danish , Waleed Ahmad , Jamil-un Nabi , M. Hilal , Anders Hagfeldt , Abdullah M. Asiri Bulk Heterojunction Tandem Photoelectric Cell Based on p-Si and Phthalocyanine International Journal of Electrochemical Science (2017) doi: 10.20964/2017.10.55 

How on Earth did a Swedish professor in Switzerland get to collaborate with fellow scholars in Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and… Tajikistan? A clue: the last author, the towel-headed Saudi Abdullah M. Asiri, who is a chemistry professor at the King Abdulaziz University and a papermiller who publishes fraudulent spectra all the time. Just one example, in an Elsevier journal completely overtaken by papermills:

Saima Gul , Zulfiqar Ahmad Rehan , Shahid Ali Khan , Kalsoom Akhtar , Murad Ali Khan , M I Khan , Muhammad Imtiaz Rashid , Abdullah M. Asiri , Sher Bahadar Khan Antibacterial PES-CA-Ag2O nanocomposite supported Cu nanoparticles membrane toward ultrafiltration, BSA rejection and reduction of nitrophenol Journal of Molecular Liquids (2017) doi: 10.1016/j.molliq.2016.12.093 

Asiri was even seen publishing papermilled fakes with the fraudsters Rafael Luque, Fatih Sen and Yubing Sun. Asiri is an authority on any topic a papermill has on sale, which allowed him to put his name on over 2000 papers and buy 100k citations, making him a “Highly Cited Researcher” with h-index of 139 (Hagfeldt’s is 170).

NPOF can only investigate papers where at least one author has a Swedish affiliation, while both Hagfeldt’s current employer and his former university EPFL categorically refuse to even look at the evidence. As they both told me, the responsibility to investigate lies with the other side.

“It’s not related to Sweden or Uppsala University since they happened before I joined Uppsala University.”

That was actually Lv’s repeated defence, and it wasn’t accepted. It only works for Hagfeldt.

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