In another episode of what’s going on with Huawei, the employees of the Chinese tech giant have been banned from reviewing and editing papers on the digital archive and website of the IEEE on account of the US Government’s export ban that was imposed on the company.
According to the email that IEEE sent to its editors, Huawei employees won’t be able to work on papers. The email reads, ‘we cannot use colleagues from Huawei as reviewers or Editors for the peer-review process of our journals.’ The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers or IEEE came into being on January 1, 1963, in New York, USA. It has more than 423,000 members from over 160 countries and is the world’s biggest technical professional organization — the papers published by IEEE range from electrical and electronic engineering to technology information and computing.
Almost 30% of the publications from all over the world can be attributed to IEEE. The group is responsible for publishing over 140 professional journals each year and offers more than 700 sorts of newsletters, journals, and conference proceedings. Huawei’s employees are members of over 170 standards organizations and open-source organizations. They have positions of importance, totaling at more than 180, on the board of directors of IEEE-SA, ETSI, WFA, and many other organizations. Furthermore, Huawei also has a number of researchers that are serving as editor-in-chief and deputy editor with IEEE.
The announcement has been received with wide criticism. Professor Zhihua Zhou of Nanjing University has said that the US Government has no right when it comes to banning editors from peer-reviewing papers on account of political motivations. He even said that ‘experts from all levels of management at the IEEE should propose to the IEEE to transfer its registration to Switzerland.’
The ban is the outcome of the current trade war that is ongoing between China and the US. What do you think of this?