PubPeer Has (Probably) Stopped Collecting Anonymous Commenters’ IP Addresses

In an attempt to avoid future subpoenas requesting potentially identifying information on unregistered users of the post-publication peer review website, the platform’s administrators have attempted to cease IP address collection.

Written byBob Grant

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WIKIMEDIA, CHIEF PHOTOGRAPHERPubPeer administrators do not want to log the IP addresses of anonymous commenters who post on the website, according to neuroscientist Brandon Stell, a cofounder of the post-publication peer review platform. Stell and colleagues were prompted to make this change following a legal complaint filed by Fazlul Sarkar, a researcher whose publication record has been called into question by PubPeer users commenting anonymously on the site.

Stell told The Scientist that PubPeer administrators made the decision to stop collecting IP addresses “in the months following” receipt of a letter from Nicholas Roumel, a lawyer representing Sarkar, dated October 9, 2014. Stell added that PubPeer chose to cease collecting and logging IP addresses of anonymous users in order to protect them from future subpoenas like the one that Sarkar’s attorney is pursuing in appellate courts to gain the identities of commenters who allegedly defamed Sarkar, formerly of Wayne State University in Detroit. “If we don’t have the [IP address] information, then, if we’re served with a subpoena . . . we have nothing to give away,” Stell told The Scientist today (October 4), following a Michigan State Court of Appeals hearing (Fazlul ...

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Meet the Author

Bob Grant
From 2017 to 2022, Bob Grant was Editor in Chief of The Scientist, where he started in 2007 as a Staff Writer. Before joining the team, he worked as a reporter at Audubon and earned a master’s degree in science journalism from New York University. In his previous life, he pursued a career in science, getting a bachelor’s degree in wildlife biology from Montana State University and a master’s degree in marine biology from the College of Charleston in South Carolina. Bob edited Reading Frames and other sections of the magazine.
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