Review of Reliability Assessment Methods of Drone Swarm: Clean Finding Report (DOI: 10.3390/math11112551)

Academic fraud report · Geng Detector

Summary

This is a neutral fact-check of 'Review of Reliability Assessment Methods of Drone Swarm (Fleet) and a New Importance Evaluation Based Method of Drone Swarm Structure Analysis' by Zaitseva, Levashenko, Mukhamediev, Brinzei, Kovalenko and Symagulov, published in Mathematics (MDPI) in 2023. Verdict: clean. No image manipulation, fabricated data, or falsified experimental results were detected. The paper is a theoretical/mathematical study combining a literature review with formal reliability-formula derivations (structure functions, k-out-of-n systems, Birnbaum importance measures), so first- and third-image-type forensic checks are not applicable. The hand-calculated 2-out-of-3 drone example (q1=0.2, q2=q3=0.25) yields A=0.8625, which the reviewer independently verified and found arithmetically correct. Concerns are limited to low novelty ('textbook formulas relabeled with drones'), self-citation patterns, and minor character-encoding typos in author affiliations (e.g., 'Univerzitn¡8215/1', 'ilina', 'Universit²de Lorraine'). These do not constitute academic misconduct.

Verdict

Clean. No evidence of data fabrication, image manipulation, or other academic misconduct. Concerns about novelty, self-citation, and typographical quality are noted but are not integrity violations.

Key findings

The paper is entirely theoretical: no experimental Western blots, microscopy images, or flow cytometry figures exist; all figures are idealized mathematical curves or schematic diagrams (e.g., Figures 6, 8, 9).
The hand-calculated example in Section 3.4 / Table 1 (2-out-of-3 drone system with q1=0.2, q2=q3=0.25) was independently verified and yields A=0.8625 exactly; the result is a deterministic computation, not fabricated data.
Formulas (11)–(16) are standard series-system reliability expressions and (21)–(27) are standard k-out-of-n reliability formulas; the derivation contains no mathematical errors, though innovation is limited.
Figures 3 and 4 are reused from the authors' own prior work (Ref [38]); self-citation is heavy in the review sections (Refs 4, 38, 40, 44, 45) but appears compliant with editorial norms.
Author affiliations contain character-encoding artifacts (e.g., 'Univerzitn¡8215/1' should be 'Univerzitná'; 'ilina' should be 'Žilina'; 'Universit²de Lorraine' should be 'Université de Lorraine'), likely from copy-paste of PDF text or font issues.

Evidence highlights

DOI: 10.3390/math11112551
Manual recomputation of Table 1: p1=0.8, p2=p3=0.75; A = p1·p2·(1−p3) + p1·(1−p2)·p3 + (1−p1)·p2·p3 + p1·p2·p3 = 0.8625. Matches the paper exactly.
Figure inventory consists only of theoretical/structural illustrations (Figures 3, 4, 6, 8, 9); no biological or empirical imagery exists to test for duplication.
Self-citation density is high in Sections 2 and 3, with Ref [38] serving as the principal source for the drone-swarm reliability platform description.

Notes

Image-based forensic checks (first-type and third-type) are not applicable because the paper contains no original empirical images.
The novelty critique ('repackaged textbook reliability theory applied to drone swarms') is a judgment on scholarly contribution, not on research integrity, and is outside the scope of misconduct detection.
Encoding errors in affiliations are presentation defects only and do not affect the validity of the mathematics.
Final determination of any misconduct remains with the responsible institutions and editorial bodies; this report is informational only.