Huawei employees get banned from science publisher IEEE

The effects of the U.S. ban continue.

What you need to know

  • Huawei employees can no longer edit/review papers from IEEE.
  • A professor from Peking University resigned from the editorial board following this news.
  • IEEE stands for "Electrical and Electronics Engineers" and is a major science publisher.

The ramifications for Huawei following news of its U.S. ban have been massive. Most recently, the Electrical and Electronics Engineers (or IEEE for short) publishing group decided to ban Huawei employees from editing its papers.

For those that aren't familiar, the IEEE is responsible for working with scientists and professors from all over the world to help advance technologies of all kinds. Huawei has multiple employees within the IEEE, but as a result of this ban, they can no longer review papers before being published.

Per a statement IEEE sent out to its editors-in-chief:

As a result, we cannot use colleagues from Huawei as reviewers or Editors for the peer-review process of our journals...If we continue to do so, this may have severe legal implications.

IEEE notes that Huawei employees can remain on its Editorial Boards; however, they can no longer handle any papers until the United States removes its ban.

Following this news, Professor Haixia Zhang from Peking University sent out a letter announcing his resignation from the IEEE. In his letter, Zhang said:

As an old friend and senior IEEE member, I am really shocked to hear that IEEE is involved in 'US-Huawei Ban' for replacing all reviewers from Huawei, which is far beyond the basic line of Science and Technology which I was trained and am following in my professional career till now....As a professor, I AM NOT accept this. Therefore, I decided to quit from IEEE NANO and IEEE JEMS editorial board until one day it come back to our common professional integrity.

While an organization like IEEE is a bit outside the realm of what we usually cover, it just goes to show how much of an impact this ban is having on Huawei.

If nothing changes by August 19 when the United States' ban officially goes into effect, it'll be interesting to see what connections/relationships Huawei has left.

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