Geng Report: Suspicious Figure Captions in 'Policy-Hiding Bilateral Attribute-Based Access Control Scheme' (DOI: 10.13451/j.sxu.ns.2025008)

Academic fraud report · Geng Detector

Summary

This Geng academic-integrity report reviews the paper 'Policy-Hiding Bilateral Attribute-Based Access Control Scheme' by Guo Lifeng, Sun Wenzhe, and Zhao Yu, published in the Journal of Shanxi University (Natural Science Edition) in 2025 (DOI: 10.13451/j.sxu.ns.2025008). The overall verdict is 'Questionable' (yellow). The primary finding is an abnormal figure caption in Fig. 2 that retains bracketed template-style text in both Chinese and English, describing the experimental environment as '[Python 3.8.0 with Charm 0.43 library and MNT224 elliptic curve environment]' and the unit as '[milliseconds]'. The reporter interprets these square-bracketed segments as likely LLM-generation residue, template placeholders, or machine-translation artifacts left unedited. The severity is rated moderate. A secondary finding notes that, because only the text layer was available, image-reuse checks, splicing detection, and statistical digit-pattern analysis could not be performed on Figs. 1–3 or Tables 1–3. The reporter recommends requesting raw data and plotting scripts from the authors and flagging the editorial error to the journal.

Verdict

🟡 Questionable. The report identifies one confirmed irregularity (template-style bracketed figure captions suggestive of unedited LLM/template output) and one unverifiable concern (figures and tables not amenable to image or data analysis in the text-only review). No definitive fabrication is established.

Key findings

Finding 1 — Abnormal figure captions with bracket placeholders (confirmed). The Fig. 2 caption in both Chinese and English contains literal square-bracket segments that read like template variables or prompt residue:
Chinese: 实验在 [Python 3.8.0 搭配 Charm 0.43 库和 MNT224 椭圆曲线环境] 下进行，时间单位为 [毫秒].
English: The experiments were conducted in [Python 3.8.0 with Charm 0.43 library and MNT224 elliptic curve environment], and the time is measured in [milliseconds].
Severity: 🟡 moderate. Status: ✅ confirmed.
Finding 2 — Figures and data not verifiable (text-only limitation). Figs. 1–3 and Tables 1–3 could not be inspected for image reuse, splicing, or suspicious numeric patterns, so the standard Geng checks for image reuse, Photoshop traces, and trailing-digit regularity are inconclusive.
Severity: 🟡 insufficient evidence. Status: ⚠️ not actionable from this report.

Evidence highlights

DOI: 10.13451/j.sxu.ns.2025008.
Location of Finding 1: Page 9, Fig. 2 (Chinese and English captions).
Specific quoted strings (preserved exactly):
[Python 3.8.0 搭配 Charm 0.43 库和 MNT224 椭圆曲线环境]
[毫秒]
[Python 3.8.0 with Charm 0.43 library and MNT224 elliptic curve environment]
[milliseconds]
Suggested interpretation (per reporter): residual LLM output, machine-translation artifacts, or unfilled code/template placeholders copied verbatim. This is presented as an inference, not as a technical demonstration.
Limitation: No raw images, no raw numeric tables, and no plotting scripts were available for inspection.

Notes

The bracketed caption language is genuinely unusual for a final journal version, but alternative explanations (in-house author template, journal style-guide placeholder not replaced, bilingual conversion glitch) are not formally ruled out.
The reporter's recommendations are to (a) request raw experimental data and plotting scripts for Figs. 2 and 3, (b) alert the editorial office of the Journal of Shanxi University to the caption error, and (c) raise a PubPeer comment focused on the caption anomaly and a data-sharing request.
This is a text-only review; any final determination of misconduct would require an institutional investigation with access to the original figures, source data, and plotting code.
The report itself carries a standard AI-assisted disclaimer and explicitly states that both false positives and false negatives are possible.