Academic papers retracted due to ... software licensing?www.theregister.comDam, the consequences

An academic journal has retracted two papers because it determined their authors used unlicensed software.

As noted by Retraction Watch, Elsevier's Ain Shams Engineering Journal withdrew two papers exploring dam failures after complaints from Flow Science, the Santa Fe, New Mexico-based maker of a computational fluid dynamics application called FLOW-3D.

"Following an editorial investigation as a result of a complaint from the software distributor, the authors admitted that the use of professional software, FLOW-3D program for the results published in the article, was made without a license from the developer," a note from the journal's editor-in-chief explains.

"One of the conditions of submission of a paper for publication is that the article does not violate any intellectual property rights of any person or entity and that the use of any software is made under a license or permission from the software owner."

Elsevier, based in the Netherlands, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.