Forty-three papers of Ashok Pandey who retired from the Thiruvanthapuram-based National Institute for Interdisciplinary Science and Technology (CSIR-NIIST) and now associated with the Lucknow-based Indian Institute of Toxicology Research (CSIR-IITR) that were published in an Elsevier journal Bioresources Technology have been retracted.

The reasons cited in most of the retraction notices published by the journal are that Dr. Pandey handled the review of the initial submission of the manuscript either in the capacity of the executive editor or the editor-in-chief and had required a revision of the manuscript. Dr. Pandey’s name was added as a coauthor when the revised version was submitted by the authors without any explanation. While in a couple of instances, the manuscript was assigned to a different editor before it was eventually accepted for publication, in four instances, Dr. Pandey was listed as an author on the original submission of the paper but his name was removed from the authorship list at some stage and hence the published paper does not contain his name. However, in all the four instances, he continued to handle the review process, eventually accepting the paper for publication.

An editor-in-chief of a Springer journal tells that a journal manager handles the editorial process, checks for plagiarism in the manuscript, and raises a flag in case of any conflict of interest such as a journal editor also being listed as a coauthor before assigning the manuscript to the editor-in-chief. “This is the general practice in all journals by all publishers,” he says. The retraction notice does not make any mention of the role and lapses of the journal manager and lays all the blame on Dr. Pandey, he says.

Source: https://www-thehindu-com.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/science/12-papers-involving-a-scientist-from-csirs-indian-institute-of-toxicology-research-retracted/article68399826.ece/amp/