Springer Nature has removed two studies by Max Planck

4 hours ago (science.org)

> […] the publisher posted a blank white page with the cryptic phrase, “This article has been withdrawn due to article violation.” Springer Nature is nevertheless still selling the empty PDF for $39.95.

completely unsurprised, given the state of online papers publishing. if you don’t have an subscription or aren’t an organisation member, the fees are insane

  • Oh even if your org has a subscription, the fees are insane. You just don't see them.

    Things are slowly changing but I can't wait for this parasitic business model to collapse for good.

    • What's most bothersome is there is work for them to do.

      How about assigning a real copy editor with subject matter expertise? How about publishing open source libraries that automatically validate and output visualizations for their formats? How about hosting multimedia supplements?

      It would not be difficult at all to earn the money they charge. There is so much room for creativity and innovation and adding value in scientific publishing.

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    • I published in Nature Physics and the copy-editing process was quite embarrassing, to the point where we had to repeatedly nag them to stop them from making the manuscript presentation worse.

      To be clear, I’m not talking about subjective style issues, I mean conforming to their own spec and avoiding careless bugs.

      All remaining work fell on the backs of the physics referees. I’m not sure what value Springer provided from an editorial standpoint. It was disappointing to say the least after all that hard work.

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  • The fees to publish in journals for authors/labs are insane too.

    • I'm not familiar here, but if both the publishers and readers are unhappy, why do these services still exist? Is it the 'prestige' of being published with some of these guys? Or do you need to be published for xyz reasons?

      Seems like, in 2026, we can have direct publishing without the need of these services? Is it the infra, like query tools and such, that prevent a migration away?

      edit: I'm not going to reply to every comment, but thank you all, helps paint the picture a bit better for me!

      7 replies →

  • I was going to post that snippet as well.

    How much longer are scientists going to continue respecting and embracing the useless parasites that are journal publishers, with their right-out-in-the-open, obvious, intentional grifting. You don't need these jackasses.

    What you rely on them for technically, the dissemination of papers, could be done with an $80/mo Kubernetes cluster and like three part-time volunteers.

    Now in terms of what they provide for the peer-reviewing process... It's not like they pay reviewers. And most of that money is definitely not going to editors. It appears journal brands are only useful as signals of prestige, but with their ethics increasingly circling the drain, I'm not even sure that trust is well-placed.

    • When their jobs don't depend on it. (as in it is evaluated for hiring and promotion) Ofc it differs depending on discipline.

> Springer Nature deviated from the normal practice of merely slapping the word RETRACTED across the digital version of the paper while still allowing scholars to read the text. Instead, the publisher posted a blank white page with the cryptic phrase, “This article has been withdrawn due to article violation.” Springer Nature is nevertheless still selling the empty PDF for $39.95.

The system is broken

  • I am still suspicious that this has something to do with the relationship between Springer-Verlag and the Max Plank Digital Library (MPDL) which supports open access.

    In 2014 MPDL purchase 110k out-of-print and historically significant titles. In 2015 Springer acquired open-access journals from Max Plank Society. In 2022 There was an open-access book deal allowing Plank Institute members to more easily publish books.

    Things were more not always so intertwined and in 2007 the Society canceled a licensing agreement with Springer due to subscription prices and usage restrictions.

    • Planck's papers contained multiple em-dashes -- so, clearly he used ChatGPT to write these papers.

      He should have known better. </sarc>

  • The system is fine. The culture is broken. Scientific publishing isn't forced on the community by regulation or necessity. You can publish papers in infinite number of ways online. Unlike something like healthcare or housing, where there are no alternatives, there are plenty of alternatives when it comes to media publishing.

    • There are not if you are working in it. Some grants for example include provisions that you publish in tier so and so journals. If that is the case, there might be one of those that is open-access / independent, but more likely there is not.

  • and, as the articles points out, it is literally out of copyright.

    For profit journals need to die.

    • You know what is even worse? A lot of what is paid come from public grants and not-for-profit grants. Reviewers are not paid. Editors are mostly other researchers. Authors are required to put the paper in ready-to-process.format. Thus public money funelled into journal pockets.

      There is almost zero reasons why the governments or NIH-like institutions don't have their paper repository.

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  • "The purpose of a system is what it does"

    it's designed that way.

    • Robert Maxwell, Ghislane Maxwell's father, was a big player in turning the industry towards profit seeking (though I agree with the sibling comment that it's capitalism's fault ultimately).

    • Downvoting this comment doesn’t make it less true.

      Most everyone and everything has been captured by the ultimate cynicism of Capitalism: if I don’t do it someone else will, so might as well put the money in my pocket right??

      I agree with @kingleopod — this system is designed to do what it is doing: keep knowledge private and keep profits high. Full stop.

Do I understand correctly that publishing the same paper in multiple journals is considered self-plagiarism? Who in the name of the great monopoly invented such name for that?

  • The same morons who think that re-using something you have written before in academic work without quoting yourself is (self-)plagiarism for which you should be sanctioned?

    (Yes, they are morons because no reasonable person would think this is fair. You need convoluted nonsense arguments to justify this)

    • It's bad manners and a waste of people's time and attention to present previously published work as novel.

      Repeating a phrase or two in a document's introduction isn't going to raise flags from any serious people, but copying data, analysis, or large swaths of text? That's a paddlin'.

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    • plagiarism, with heavy sanctions, of self is of course ridiculous, but having as a standard that you should cite yourself when doing it is not a bad standard. As a reader, it might trigger a "where have I read this before" reaction which is akin to confusion; also having notice that there is another paper on this topic could be quite useful.

  • Academics base their careers around citation numbers. You need publications and a high H-index to make it anywhere. Self-plagiarism reduces the effectiveness of that metric, which makes it harder to evaluate the actual impact of a researcher.

    It should be no surprise that republishing in multiple journals was accepted in the pre-computer era, where citations were inherently harder to track (and thus less valuable as a metric).

    Quoting Upton Sinclair, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it."

> Springer Nature deviated from the normal practice of merely slapping the word RETRACTED across the digital version of the paper while still allowing scholars to read the text. Instead, the publisher posted a blank white page with the cryptic phrase, “This article has been withdrawn due to article violation.” Springer Nature is nevertheless still selling the empty PDF for $39.95.

If someone else did this, it would've been called scam.

  • Agreed. The simplest explanation, though, is probably that they used a low quality software tool here. Shame on those software developers who have written it in the first place - they also supported censorship here.

Link to site: https://retractionwatch.com

One of the recent posts:

"A study claiming a tenfold decrease in bugs splattered on evolutionary biologist Anders Møller’s windshield over two decades has been retracted."

> In November 1940, philosopher Aloys Müller criticized Planck’s views in a Naturwissenschaften piece titled “Naturwissenschaft und reale Außenwelt” (“Natural Science and the Real External World”). A month later, Planck responded in print—and used the exact same title. This, Gingras and Khelfaoui suspect, caused Springer Nature’s copyright bot to retract the paper as plagiarism decades later, even though the contents of the two essays differ markedly.

> The debate over the Copenhagen interpretation remains active today, which explains why Gingras and Khelfaoui find the retractions so troubling: A key scientist’s views on an important controversy have been memory holed.

> Both Scarlata and Gingras are concerned that papers by less prominent scientists have disappeared as well without anyone realizing. At a minimum, Gingras wants Planck’s papers restored. “Whoever did it, I don’t care,” he says, “just put them [back] in the database. Intellectually, it’s not acceptable.”

Thanks, copyright bots.

> Springer Nature is nevertheless still selling the empty PDF for $39.95.

I wish I could say such behavior was shocking. Everything Springer touches turns to shit.

I always feel that people want one central place to prove their abilities, but when that central place becomes corrupted, it's hard to break away from it. Because the authority of that place feels as if it's tied to your own authority

Why would you need to pay $40 for a PDF of a paper published almost a hundred years ago? What makes the paper not public domain?

  • You don't. It is public domain. You pay that if you want to get it from them. This is the same as I can get a free pdf of "Linear algebra done right" from Sheldon Axler's website but if I want to get it from Springer I pay $50 or whatever it is.

Well, I can't be mad if I ever get accused if Plank has no chance.

  • Plank is dead and so cannot defend himself. You are at least alive and have a potential to do something (what or if it will work is an open question).

    Plank is very famous. If this happens to you, but 50 years after you die: odds are you are not famous and nobody will notice.

"Springer Nature is nevertheless still selling the empty PDF for $39.95." LOL, what a world we are building.

> Repackaging the same work multiple times is considered “self-plagiarism” and frowned upon today

In other words, publishers want a monopoly on what they publish and take the copy rights away from the actual authors.

the Germans have a word for that: "vertrottelt" (in English it is just translated as "stupid", but it conveys much more meaning than stupid)

> detailed information about specific retractions is usually confidential and can only be shared with the relevant authors.

Good luck sharing that information with Max Planck. It's amazing how robotically humans can act sometimes. I suppose this could be an AI or automated response, but it's just as likely it's someone following the letter of the law without using any critical thought.

  • I really wish they would have asked the representative to confirm that they can only share detailed information with the skeletal remains of an author who died 78 years ago. Not that I think it would make any difference, but it would force the representative to acknowledge the absurdity of the situation.

> Representatives from Springer Nature declined to comment, beyond saying that “detailed information about specific retractions is usually confidential and can only be shared with the relevant authors.”

Was it a bot commenting as well? That's a hilariously tone-deaf response. Guess we'd better bust out the ouija board to ask max plank himself.

  • I'm sorry, communicating with ghosts is against Springer Nature policy. This isn't a disreputable publication like Séance Monthly!

The acronym for the University of Quebec at Montreal is UQàM not UQ :P

  • One researcher was at UQAM, the other was at UQTR. Are both not considered part of UQ?

    • No, both are separate universities, although some universities also have satelite campuses (UDeM (montreal) has multiple).

      Edit0: Although UQ is a group of 10 universities that are public, they are not a single entity.

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lol "self plagiarism". Max Planck got an "extra publication."

Counting papers is death. Everything connected with it is death. This is Max fucking Planck, who gave us the photon. We're judging him according to today's "standards." He's "failing."

Ok. So be it. We'll get what we incentivize.

Max Planck published the same paper in multiple journals in the 1940s, which was common practice at the time. He also published a second unrelated paper that happened to have the same title as the paper it was a response to. In 2011 both papers were retracted from their journals' archives, most likely because a bot incorrectly flagged them for plagiarism.

Saved you a click.

  • You missed the two absurdities:

    1. Springer Nature are happily selling an empty PDF for $39.95.

    2. Springer Nature responded that they’re not going to tell you why they retracted it, because retraction details are normally only shared with the author (who in this case died almost 80 years ago).

This is what invariably happens when you give bots control of important day-to-day business operations: The bot makes some horrendous mistake and then there's no human being around who has the authority, the access, and the knowledge to both revert the bot's decision and make sure that the bot doesn't just replay the error at a later date.

> “detailed information about specific retractions is usually confidential and can only be shared with the relevant authors.”

Time for a séance.

Gingras is correct - Springer here tries to censor. I believe the only way to respond to this is by removing Springer completely. Science can not survive when private companies such as Springer begin to censor science, in particular old science.

> Springer Nature is nevertheless still selling the empty PDF for $39.95.

And this is also outrageous. Not only do they censor but they charge people for that. I believe states need to build up a basic scientific work, in particular for older papers. It can not be that private entities control access to information here.

> Scarlata suspects Springer Nature’s internal policing software removed the paper

That's even worse. So an internal tool decides what to censor. Imagine if all access to old articles were controlled by private greedy companies that run auto-tools, AI, to censor stuff. We need to retaliate here in a way to ensure open access to science perpetually.

> Representatives from Springer Nature declined to comment, beyond saying that“detailed information about specific retractions is usually confidential and can only be shared with the relevant authors.”

Max is dead, so this is a cop out. But even aside from this, it is incorrect.

Springer has a responsibility to everyone else here. If they censor something they abused our trust. Such articles should not be held in private hands. The whole idea of taxpayers paying for something and then Springer, Elsevier etc.. siphoning that money by their paywall, is outrageous. Now that they also censor information, it is time to take all their privileges completely away.

Either way the Streisand effect will now kick in. Springer has become famous for trying to cancel Planck. That injustice can not stand, no matter if automatic tools used it or not (which also shows that these tools are buggy - shame on Springer for employing buggy tools leading to vile censorship methods).

Well I didn't see any counter evidence by Planck so Springer Nature must be right. Otherwise he should defend himself! \s

To me, this seems like Science dunking on Nature (the journals). It’s interesting, but only a story because Nature is involved.

I wrote a whole chapter about Max Planck and his challenges and his legacy in my book "What is light? Wave theory of light and origins of ether in science" check it out if you are interested

  • I (and I'm sure others) would be interested in your thoughts on Planck and publishing. Otherwise, the comment is just an advertisement.