Today, IEEE sent an email to its editors, saying “we cannot use colleagues from Huawei as reviewers or Editors for the peer-review process of our journals,” because the US government has put Huawei on its BIS list.

Later, the full email was revealed by an IEEE member:

IEEE’s full name is the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. Founded on January 1, 1963, it is based in New York, USA.

As the world’s largest technical professional organization, IEEE has 423,000 members in over 160 countries. In the fields of electrical and electronic engineering, computing, and technology information, research published by IEEE accounts for about 30% of all the publications in the world. Publishing more than 140 professional journals every year, IEEE provides more than 700 kinds of journals, newsletters, and conference proceedings.

It should be noted that Huawei has always been an important supporter of IEEE.

Huawei has joined 177 standards organizations and open source organizations, and has held 183 key positions, serving on the board of directors of IEEE-SA, ETSI, WFA, and other organizations.

Huawei successfully hosted the IEEE-SA CAG meeting in Shenzhen. All IEEE-SA CAG delegates unanimously approved Huawei proposed smart city reference architecture standard project P2413.1. It is one of the big milestones for IEEE standard in smart city area. https://t.co/OL01qRWWTf pic.twitter.com/5x6YPKdRTW — Huawei Enterprise (@HuaweiEnt) April 20, 2018

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Huawei also has a number of researchers in the IEEE holding positions such as editor-in-chief and deputy editor. For example, Qi Tian, chief scientist of computational vision at Huawei’s Noah’s Ark Laboratory, is an IEEE fellow. He has served as editor-in-chief and editor of various top IEEE international journals. Dr. Xiang Liu, a senior expert of optical network at the Huawei Institute of Aesthetics, is the deputy editor of The Optical Society of America and Optics Express, and the editor-in-chief of the IEEE Optical Communications.

At the end of this January, Huawei even successfully held the IEEE P2413 working group meeting in Shenzhen to promote the IEEE smart city standard process.

As the email spread on the internet, it has set off a lot of waves in the academic world.

Professor Zhihua Zhou of Nanjing University expressed his shock to hear the news and said that IEEE itself is an international organization registered in the United States instead of an American organization, which has no right to ban the editors from peer-reviewing papers due to political motivations. He suggested that “experts from all levels of management at the IEEE should propose to the IEEE to transfer its registration to Switzerland.”

Chinese netizens also expressed astonishment, saying their belief in “Technology Without Borders” is collapsing because of IEEE’s action.

SEE ALSO: IEEE Admitted Banning Huawei Employees From Peer-Reviewing Papers