IEEE's latest statement: Huawei employees cannot participate in reviewing papers, but can continue to provide sponsorship

安妮 乾明 发自 凹非寺
量子位 报道 | 公众号 QbitAI

IEEE officially confirmed the purge of Huawei reviewers.

Just now, IEEE issued a statement saying that as a non-political, non-profit organization registered in New York, IEEE must comply with the legal obligations stipulated in the jurisdiction of the United States and other regions.

However, relevant U.S. government regulations restrict Huawei and its employees from participating in some IEEE activities that are not usually open to the public, including the peer review and editorial process of some publications , and IEEE needs to comply.

Violations of U.S. export control regulations may subject IEEE to significant civil or criminal penalties, including fines or imprisonment.

They say compliance with these rules protects the IEEE and its volunteers and membership.

According to the statement, all IEEE members, including Huawei employees, can also do the following:

• Continue to maintain IEEE individual and corporate membership and exercise voting rights ;

• Subscribe to and access IEEE's digital library and read other IEEE publications and documents as usual ;

• Submit technical papers normally and enter the publication review process normally;

• Regularly participate in and attend academic conferences and activities sponsored by IEEE, and can sponsor or accept awards from IEEE ;

• Members related to Huawei can also attend business, logistics and other meetings as normal, including participating in the planning of academic conferences ;

• Huawei and its employees may continue to be members of the IEEE Standards Association, including obtaining or exercising voting rights as members;

• Regularly attend IEEE standard-setting meetings , submit new standard proposals, and participate in public discussions of standard technical proposals.

IEEE also stated in the statement that if the U.S. government further explains the application of U.S. export control regulations to peer review, IEEE will make corresponding adjustments.

Event Review

Yesterday, IEEE personally practiced "science has borders", angering the academic and research circles.

An internal IEEE email was exposed, ordering the purge of Huawei reviewers, and the incident continued to ferment.

Anger is the first emotion that most people feel after seeing the content of this email.

There are also Chinese scholars holding academic positions in IEEE who have published open letters announcing their resignation from the relevant positions.

However, some academic experts pointed out that withdrawing from IEEE positions will only make the Chinese scholar community more passive and helpless.

After the incident, how should we view the impact it has brought?

Professors from Peking University and Tsinghua University announce their withdrawal

After the internal email was exposed, IEEE member and journal editor Zhang Haixia, a professor at Peking University, published an open letter to the IEEE president on her research lab's WeChat public account, requesting to withdraw from the editorial boards of two IEEE journals:

[Statement] Today I was shocked to hear that IEEE has banned Huawei experts from participating in journal review. This is far beyond the bottom line of what an academic can accept. As a member of IEEE and a journal editor, I must make my position clear: I have applied to withdraw from the editorial boards of the two IEEE journals I am on, and have written an open letter to the IEEE president-elect. This is my personal attitude and has nothing to do with any other organization or individual. I hereby declare it.

After the open letter was published, it attracted a huge amount of attention and was forwarded. As of 9 am today, the article had already exceeded 100,000+ views, and the number of views reached 7,000+.

In addition, Liu Yiqun, an associate professor at the Department of Computer Science at Tsinghua University, also said that he had just asked his students not to submit papers to any conferences or journals organized by IEEE, and that he would resign from any IEEE-related academic position as soon as possible in accordance with the procedures.

According to the relevant introduction page of Tsinghua University, Liu Yiqun is a senior member of IEEE.

Resigning from his post is enough to show the anger of Chinese scholars about this matter. Many scholars have also expressed their views on the possible impact of this matter.

The academic community may face division

Nanjing University professor Zhou Zhihua posted on Weibo that this incident did not harm Huawei, but the international academic community.

Because all IEEE publications (Huawei) can still be read, not to mention that even if they are not allowed to read, there is nothing to see on the Internet. What IEEE prohibits is that Huawei experts provide review services for journals.

For example, everyone can see the flowers in the garden, but now Huawei is prohibited from watering and fertilizing them free of charge.

The longer-term impact is that the academic community may face division.

Liu Zhiyuan, an assistant researcher at the Department of Computer Science and Technology at Tsinghua University, believes that if the confrontation continues like this, the world will have dual-backup international academic organizations, academic journals, academic conferences, technical standards, and so on.

Chen Yiran, a professor at the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Duke University, holds a similar view, saying that it seems time for Europe and Asia to establish their own IEEE/ACM.

Zhihu certified user @敬而为真 said that he is an associate professor and that before IEEE lifts the ban on Huawei, his research group will not submit papers to its journals or review them. After all, there are so many journals to choose from .

At the same time, the associate professor also suggested that the Chinese scientific community should take this opportunity to establish its own international authoritative journals and conference system, otherwise academic exchanges and public opinion guidance will always be controlled by others.

This incident may also have certain negative impacts on IEEE, another party involved.

@甜草莓, an excellent answerer on the communication topic, said that before this, Beihang University and National University of Defense Technology were on the BIS list but there was no ban. From this point of view, this ban was obviously due to political pressure.

However, Chinese communications articles do not have to be submitted to IEEE:

Based on the level and number of papers published by Chinese in the field of communications, IEEE will also be hit hard.

Some netizens also took spontaneous action, calling for the lifting of IEEE's ban on Huawei.

But even so, many Chinese scientists still call for a calm review.

Professor Zhou Zhihua of Nanjing University disagrees with the practice of withdrawing from IEEE. His views and reasons are worth referring to:

IEEE is not an enemy, just as Mr. Ren Zhengfei said that American companies are not enemies. It is recommended that IEEE change its place of registration. IEEE is an international academic organization, not just an American one. It is not clear whether IEEE took the initiative or was forced to do so (although the pressure must come from the United States). Chinese scholars have fewer and fewer voices, not more, and should not easily give up their positions. In addition, the next IEEE president, Professor Toshio Fukuda, is a teacher at Beijing Institute of Technology. It is recommended to listen to his views first.