The paper, on meteorologic influences on air pollution in India, has been retracted after it became clear that a visiting fellow included Jan Cermak, a researcher at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in Germany, as a coauthor without his permission.

According to the August 13, 2025 retraction notice, lead author Susanta Mahato provided an incorrect email address for both Cermak and another coauthor, P.K. Joshi, when submitting the paper to Chemosphere, although Joshi consented to being listed on the paper. Cermak contacted Chemosphere the same day he learned about the paper to request his name be removed from the paper. But a spokesperson for Elsevier, the journal’s publisher, told that in accordance with its policies, "author names are not removed from published articles."

Last year, Chemosphere was delisted from Clarivate’s Web of Science after more than 60 papers received expressions of concern for authorship practices and undisclosed conflicts of interest. In the last 12 months, the journal has had 38 retractions.

Source https://retractionwatch.com/2025/09/12/forged-authorship-chemosphere-meteorology-elsevier/

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