Contents
- 1. Background
- 2. Reporting a Fictitious Investigation
- 3. June 1, 2026: COPE Changes Its Determination
- 4. June 12, 2026: Chris Graf Closes the Complaint
- 5. August 2026: Withdrawal of the Claim
- 6. Significance for Business Partners and Investors
- 7. Fictitious Investigations and Legal Responsibility
- 8. The Company's Involvement
1. Background
On November 28, 2025, the journal Discover Artificial Intelligence rejected the manuscript, "The GPT-4o Shock Emotional Attachment to AI Models and Its Impact on Regulatory Acceptance: A Cross-Cultural Analysis of the Immediate Transition from GPT-4o to GPT-5." The peer-review report contained serious factual errors, including claims that GPT-5 did not exist, that the paper was fiction, and that the data were fabricated. The reviewer gave the recommendation "Major revisions required before reconsideration," but the handling editor conveyed this as "Both reviewers recommended rejection." Reports concerning the peer-review process and possible violations of the AI-use guidelines were subsequently made to Springer Nature and COPE. In January 2026, the handling editor conducted an investigation alone and concluded that the review report in question had been written by a human reviewer exercising careful professional expertise.
However, the matters reported in this case included Da Tao's own handling of the peer review and editorial decision-making. Springer Nature's Journal Editors' Code of Conduct states that complaints against editors are to be investigated in the first instance by the publisher. Accordingly, confirmation by the handling editor who was himself the subject of the complaint cannot constitute an independent publisher-level investigation. What was required of the central Research Integrity team was not simply to adopt the handling editor's self-assessment, but to verify independently of the person complained against the use of AI, the reviewer's identity and confidentiality, and the discrepancy between the reviewer's recommendation and the decision communicated to the author.
2. Reporting a Fictitious Investigation
False Statements to the Author by the Springer Nature Research Integrity Team
On January 26, 2026, Springer Nature's Research Integrity team told the author that the matter was "still under investigation" and that, once the investigation had concluded, it would report the outcome directly to COPE and copy the author. The team further instructed the author not to contact it about the concern without copying COPE because COPE was overseeing the matter, and described this as "standard practice."
However, Springer Nature's own Journal Editors' Code of Conduct states that complaints against editors are to be investigated in the first instance by the publisher. COPE is neither the publisher's internal investigating body nor its supervisory authority, and Springer Nature itself describes COPE as an advisory body. This fictitious rule forced the necessary fact-finding and dialogue to proceed through COPE. Direct verification between the author and the Springer Nature Research Integrity team was thereby obstructed, and establishing the facts took months. Even the simple question at the center of the case—whether an assessment by the Editor-in-Chief actually existed—was processed for months through exchanges involving COPE.
The investigation that a member of the team had described as "my investigation" was subsequently reported to COPE as an assessment by the handling editor and the Editor-in-Chief. It was ultimately confirmed that no separate or additional assessment by anyone other than the handling editor existed. The team therefore restricted direct communication with the author on the basis of a nonexistent procedure while reporting to COPE the results of an investigation that did not exist.
Contents of the Fictitious Investigation Reported to COPE and the Author
COPE asked whether the Editor-in-Chief had been involved in assessing the appeal, as stated in the journal's policy. Springer Nature answered, "Yes."
COPE further asked Springer Nature to explain what checks had been conducted by the journal or the Springer Nature Research Integrity Group concerning (1) the use of AI in peer review, (2) the identity of Reviewer 2, and (3) a possible breach of the confidentiality of the unpublished manuscript. Springer Nature responded as follows.
“When the concerns were raised the EIC and handling editor reviewed the reviews submitted to consider the quality of the reviews and on if they believed the review had been generated by an LLM. As stated previously, they believed the reviews to be acceptable and did not believe them to be LLM generated. This is a decision made by the handling editor and the EIC.”
Springer Nature therefore specifically represented to COPE that the handling editor and the Editor-in-Chief had actually reviewed the reports, professionally assessed their quality and the possibility of LLM generation, and both concluded that the reports were acceptable and not LLM-generated. It also stated that no sufficiently reliable LLM-detection tool existed and that none had therefore been used; the conclusion was presented as the professional judgment of human editors.
Specific professional acts were fabricated and attributed to an Editor-in-Chief who had no involvement whatsoever in the matter: that he had read the reports, assessed their quality and the possibility that they were AI-generated, and concluded, in his professional judgment, that they were “acceptable” and “not LLM generated.” COPE's questions also covered the author's concerns, whether Reviewer 2 existed (note: there are extremely strong grounds to suspect that the handling editor fabricated the reviewer and generated the review report with AI; see the case page), and whether the confidentiality of the unpublished manuscript had been breached. Springer Nature did not answer the questions concerning verification of Reviewer 2's identity or the confidentiality breach.
In May 2026, COPE notified the author of the outcome of its review as follows:
“The information that we received indicates that the journal followed up on your concerns via a process that involved the handling editor and the Editor-in-Chief of the journal. The editors evaluated your concerns and the reviews received, and deemed the reviewers’ reports to be adequate and not generated via AI tools. The editors considered that there was no breach in the journal’s policy for reviewers, and upheld the decision for rejection for the manuscript. The journal communicated the outcome of their review to Dr Naito.
COPE’s review is strictly focused on procedural matters. The Facilitation & Integrity subcommittee considers that the journal followed an adequate process aligned to COPE expectations to review the concerns raised to their attention.
We do not have other advice for the journal, and thus, we cannot further pursue this matter.”
In response, the author submitted the following verification results to COPE:
• Discover Artificial Intelligence did not have an Editor-in-Chief in place at the time of this case.
• Former Editor-in-Chief Okyay Kaynak denied any involvement in the appeal or in the assessment of the complaint in this case.
• The January 20, 2026 report recorded only Da Tao's own assessment.
• In February 2026, the Research Integrity team explained that Da Tao himself had examined the peer-review report and the submitted manuscript.
• The author received no such report from the journal at any time.
Springer Nature's Fictitious-Investigation Scheme
Springer Nature's handling of this case violates its own official policies.
Springer Nature's Appeals and Complaints policy expressly imposes notification duties: for appeals, “The complainant is informed of the decision with an explanation if appropriate”; and for complaints concerning procedure or publication ethics, “The complainant will be given appropriate feedback.” Its Journal Editors' Code of Conduct also provides that the publisher first conducts its own investigation and seeks advice from COPE, an “advisory body,” only in unresolved cases.
In this case, Springer Nature initially stated that, after the investigation had concluded, it would report the outcome to COPE and copy the author. In its actual report to COPE, however, Springer Nature stated that the Editor-in-Chief had also conducted an assessment and made the factually baseless statement that “the journal communicated the outcome of its review to the author.” The author received no such assessment outcome from either the journal or Springer Nature.
Normal Procedure (Based on Official Policies)
Appeal by the author
Journal or Springer Nature headquarters ➔ reassessment by the Editor-in-Chief or another editor
Journal or Springer Nature headquarters ➔ formally notifies the author of the outcome and explanation (duty to inform)
(Advice may be sought from COPE if necessary)
The Fictitious-Investigation Scheme Used Here
Appeal by the author
Springer Nature headquarters ➔ the Editor-in-Chief conducted an assessment (a fictitious premise)
Springer Nature headquarters ➔ falsely reports to COPE that the Editor-in-Chief found no problem and that the journal had already notified the author
COPE ➔ tells the author that the author had already been notified and closes the case despite no such notice having been given
By the time Springer Nature told COPE on April 20, 2026 that the Editor-in-Chief had been involved, the Company had already identified a conflict with the actual records and had begun seeking factual confirmation from the relevant parties. Accordingly, when COPE concluded in May, on the basis of that explanation, that the process had been adequate and closed the case, the Company submitted to COPE on the same day the verification results and records showing that the claim of Editor-in-Chief involvement was not factual.
3. June 1, 2026: COPE Changes Its Determination
COPE reopened the case it had closed and, on June 1, 2026, concluded that the peer-review process at Discover Artificial Intelligence had been inappropriate.
Without this change in determination, Springer Nature's false report to COPE would have become part of the official external record as an "adequate process." When an employee of a publisher falsely attributes professional assessments to an Editor-in-Chief or other editors who had no involvement whatsoever, and reports those purported assessments to the author or COPE, that conduct destroys editorial independence, a foundation of academic publishing.
The consequences for COPE were not hypothetical. The May COPE report, which incorporated false information in its conclusion, became an external record in which a third-party ethics organization validated a fictitious investigation. On June 12, 2026, Springer Nature Research Integrity Director Chris Graf used this inaccurate COPE report as external support for closing the complaint, maintained that the handling, including the decision attributed to the Editor-in-Chief, had been appropriate, refused any further investigation, and closed the matter. COPE's name and credibility were thus used to legitimize the closure of a complaint on an inaccurate factual basis. The Company's rebuttal therefore did more than prevent obstruction of the author's appeal; it also helped protect the reputation of Discover Artificial Intelligence and the accuracy of COPE's own record.
In this case, immediately after COPE fully closed the case in May by stating that it could not pursue it further, the Company submitted verification results and records that same day demonstrating the factual error in the Editor-in-Chief involvement claim. The closed case was promptly reopened, and the conclusion was changed on June 1.
4. June 12, 2026: Chris Graf Closes the Complaint
On June 12, Research Integrity Director Chris Graf notified the author as follows:
“Thank you for setting out your concerns, and for sharing the COPE report (which I note contains material differences to the report COPE shared with us directly). We remain confident that the editorial handling of your submission, including the decision taken by the Editors-in-Chief, was appropriate and consistent with our established editorial and ethical standards. We therefore reaffirm our support for the overall editorial decision and do not consider that there is a basis for further investigation or for any form of compensation. Springer Nature considers the matter of your complaint properly addressed and closed, with no further action planned to address it on our side.”
At this point, Graf explicitly recognized that there were "material differences" between the June COPE report received by the author and the May report that Springer Nature had received directly from COPE. Nevertheless, he stated that Springer Nature "remain[ed] confident" in the handling, including the decision attributed to the Editor-in-Chief, refused to correct the record, and closed the complaint.
On June 16, UTIE Instruments Inc. sent Graf directly a detailed timeline and source records demonstrating that the claim of Editor-in-Chief involvement was false. The email showed that in February the Research Integrity team had said that only Da Tao had conducted the assessment; that the Editor-in-Chief's involvement was later added in Springer Nature's response to COPE; that Discover Artificial Intelligence had no serving Editor-in-Chief at the time; and that former Editor-in-Chief Okyay Kaynak denied involvement. The original communications were also attached, with COPE and Research Integrity personnel copied on the email. Graf did not respond to this notification, and the decision to close the complaint was not corrected.
5. August 2026: Withdrawal of the Claim
On August 6, 2026, Springer Nature acknowledged that its previous explanation that the Editor-in-Chief had participated in the assessment was incorrect and withdrew it. In its place, Springer Nature advanced a new explanation: that the handling editor and a Section Editor had conducted the assessment and that both had concluded the process was appropriate. It also stated that the matter was fully closed and that no further action would be taken. On August 21, 2026, Alfeya Baig, an Assistant Editor at Discover Artificial Intelligence, expressly informed the author, after checking with Yina Liu, that no assessment by anyone other than handling editor Da Tao existed. This objectively established that the additional assessment by an Editor-in-Chief or Section Editor claimed by Springer Nature headquarters did not exist.
Assessment of the Review by a Current Section Editor (August 28, 2026)
Following Springer Nature's new explanation on August 6, the company contacted all six Section Editors publicly listed by Discover Artificial Intelligence on August 7 and requested their professional assessment of the disputed review. On August 28, one Section Editor responded that this was the first time they had read the report, that it might be an AI hallucination, and that it was difficult to regard it as an ordinary peer-review judgment by a reviewer. The respondent did not consent to being named, so their name is not disclosed.
COPE's official explanation states that, when a complainant does not agree with the F&I's final outcome, the case is reviewed by the Trustee Board. The F&I may assess whether the procedures of a member journal or publisher were adequate, but it has no authority to determine specific measures in response to serious concerns. When serious concerns are identified, the F&I may only recommend action to the Trustee Board; all authority over measures such as suspension of membership rests with the Trustee Board.
This point is also confirmed by the past practice of Iratxe Puebla, who was responsible for this case. On August 26, 2020, in connection with concerns raised by Marc Edwards regarding an abstract by Maki et al. published in the International Journal of Infectious Diseases, Iratxe Puebla wrote to Britta Lassmann of the International Society for Infectious Diseases that, if the journal did not take the further action requested by COPE, "we will have to raise the case to the COPE Trustee Board," and notified her that the case would be referred to the Trustee Board under COPE's sanctions framework.
In this case, after the peer-review process was found inappropriate because Springer Nature had not conducted an investigation by anyone other than the handling editor who was the subject of the complaint, the Company sought higher-level review and necessary action beyond the F&I's authority and formally requested escalation to Nancy Chescheir and the COPE Trustees. The F&I nevertheless expressly refused review by the Trustee Board, stating that it would neither reconsider nor escalate a case already reviewed by the F&I Subcommittee. (Original: “We decline your request to have this matter reviewed by Nancy Chescheir and the COPE Trustees: per COPE’s standard procedures we do not reconsider or escalate cases which the subcommittee has already reviewed.”) This response by the COPE F&I contradicted COPE's own procedures.
| Period | Springer Nature's explanation |
|---|
Feb.-Apr.
2026 | Assessment by Da Tao |
Apr.-Aug.
2026 | Da Tao + Editor-in-Chief |
From Aug.
2026 | Editor-in-Chief involvement withdrawn.
Da Tao + Section Editor |
Aug. 21,
2026
(journal) | No separate or additional assessment by anyone other than Da Tao existed |
6. Significance for Business Partners and Investors
Springer Nature publicly presents research integrity and trust as important business matters. Accordingly, how the Research Integrity team investigates complaints, what facts it reports externally, and on what basis it closes cases are not merely matters for an individual editorial office; they provide information about the publisher's actual governance practices.
Springer Nature AG & Co. KGaA has been listed on the regulated market of the Frankfurt Stock Exchange (Prime Standard) since October 4, 2024. In its 2025 Annual Report, the company treats editorial policies and research integrity as important business matters and states that inaccurate, incomplete, or unethical content can undermine trust in its publications and may lead to reputational damage or financial loss. It also states that, through its Research Integrity Group, it investigates issues when research-integrity concerns arise. This case therefore also constitutes a governance test for a listed company: whether the framework of trust and integrity disclosed to investors and the research community corresponds to its actual handling of complaints. The case demonstrates that a significant divergence can arise between the publicly stated research-integrity function and the verified reality of complaint handling. This may be relevant to the assessments of major business partners, research institutions, institutional investors, and governance analysts.
7. Fictitious Investigations and Legal Responsibility
The fact that no article processing charge (APC) was paid in this case does not reduce the seriousness of a fictitious investigation in academic publishing. Springer Nature itself states that editorial decision-making should be independent of commercial or management functions and that final editorial actions are to be decided by editors. Publisher employees on the Research Integrity team used the names and authority of an Editor-in-Chief and a Section Editor who did not actually participate, and reported to an external body as though those editors had conducted assessments. In doing so, they fabricated the editorial record and infringed editorial independence.
In academic publishing, listing researchers as editorial-board members without their knowledge and using their academic authority is recognized as a classic warning sign of so-called predatory or pseudo-journals. This case is not itself a false listing of an editorial board. It is, however, a similar form of predatory-publishing behavior in that the authority of editors who did not actually participate was used to create the appearance that independent oversight had taken place.
A representative example of this kind of misrepresentation being treated as a serious issue in academic publishing is the U.S. Federal Trade Commission's case against OMICS Group. In 2016, the FTC sued OMICS Group and related defendants, alleging deceptive representations concerning rigorous peer review, editorial boards composed of prominent researchers, impact factors, indexing, publication fees, and other matters. On March 29, 2019, the U.S. District Court for the District of Nevada granted the FTC's motion for summary judgment and ordered the defendants to pay $50,130,811. The court's order expressly prohibited misrepresenting that a particular person was an editor or editorial-board member of an academic journal, or that the person participated in the selection or peer review of articles or manuscripts, and required express written consent from persons represented as affiliated with journals or conferences. The court also found the presentation of OMICS's "impact factor" misleading because it was not the standard Thomson Reuters metric but an internally calculated figure based on Google Scholar.
This case is not identical to the OMICS case. It is nevertheless important that using the name or authority of an editor who did not actually participate to represent that editorial oversight or peer review had taken place has been treated as a serious misrepresentation affecting trust in academic publishing. Springer Nature is a listed international academic publisher that, in contrast to predatory publishers such as OMICS, presents trust and research integrity as foundations of its business and as important business matters. Its own Research Integrity team reported to an external body that assessments had been conducted by an Editor-in-Chief and a Section Editor who had not in fact participated. This was not merely a clerical error; it concerned the publisher's own system of publication governance.
References: Springer Nature, Editorial policies / Journal Editors' Code of Conduct; WAME, Identifying Predatory or Pseudo-Journals; Federal Trade Commission, Court Rules in FTC’s Favor Against Predatory Academic Publisher OMICS Group (Apr. 3, 2019); U.S. District Court for the District of Nevada, FTC v. OMICS Group Inc., Order Granting Summary Judgment (Mar. 29, 2019), pp. 29-30; Springer Nature Group, Basic Information; Springer Nature, Annual Report 2025, Editorial policies and research integrity.; COPE, Facilitation and Integrity Subcommittee, Concerns about members raised for review by COPE (current version Nov. 2017).
Because the author was still at a stage before paying an APC to Springer Nature, this paper does not treat the case as a criminal fraud matter. By contrast, where a paid service receives a substantial fee on the representation that work will be "performed by human experts," in fact delegates the work entirely to AI, and after a customer raises a complaint states that an "investigation found no problem" in order to refuse a refund, compensation, or termination of the contract, then if the investigation itself was fictitious, the false explanation could constitute a representation used to avoid property or contractual liability.
8. The Company's Involvement
From February 16, 2026 onward, UTIE Instruments Inc. continued handling this matter. The Company cross-checked Springer Nature's prior explanations concerning the claimed involvement of the Editor-in-Chief, reported to COPE that they did not match the facts, and COPE concluded that the process had been inappropriate. On August 6, 2026, Springer Nature withdrew the Editor-in-Chief involvement claim as an error. With respect to the subsequent claim that a Section Editor had been involved, the Company sought factual confirmation from the journal and all Section Editors. On August 21, the journal confirmed that no separate or additional assessment, investigation, or review by anyone other than the handling editor had existed, thereby establishing that the investigation claimed by the Research Integrity team was fictitious.
Note: Before the establishment of UTIE Instruments Inc. on February 16, 2026, the Company's representative handled this matter in a personal capacity.