---
title: "Ashok Pandey"
chunk: 2/2
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashok_Pandey"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:28:20.921984+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

=== Modus operandi ===
Pandey had no research or intellectual contributions to most of the retracted papers. As Elsevier investigation announced, different researchers submit their manuscripts to the journal, he returned the manuscript and when the authors revised and resubmit their manuscript, his name was incorporated as one of the authors. Then, he handled the entire peer reviewing process. The same pattern was verified in 35 of his research papers. As Elsevier retraction notice described:Review of the initial submission of this paper was handled by the then journal Editor-in-Chief (Ashok Pandey) and revision required. Upon submission of the revised version, the journal Editor-in-Chief was added as a co-author. No justification was provided for this addition. A second editor was assigned to the paper, eventually accepting the paper for publication. This compromised the editorial process and breached the journal's policies.Elsevier also pointed out that Pandey's name was in four other research papers in which his name was included in the initial manuscripts, but was removed in the final publication. It is Elsevier's policy that if any editor is an author or co-author in the same journal, editorial duty and peer reviewing are handled by other editors. In his defence, Pandey told The Hindu that he knew as an editor that he handled the entire publication but blamed the journal manager for not assigning other editors. His co-author in two retracted papers, Anil Kumar Patel at Korea University also concurred remarking that the journal manager failed the responsibility but that Pandey's conduct was unethical.
Pandey was an inveterate manipulator as an editor. Not only were his authored papers retracted by Bioresource Technology, but several others in which he was the handling editor. The general stratagem he used were:

Assign reviewers from his circle of collaborators with whom he had authored several papers;
Add names of his collaborators during revision of the manuscript "without validation or authorisation", as Elsevier noted.
Inform the authors to add his papers in the citation. In one instance, the original manuscript had 3 of his papers cited but 10 in the published version.
In another case, Pandey was involved in an extensive plagiarism. A review paper titled "Metagenomics for taxonomy profiling: tools and approaches" he published in Taylor & Francis's Bioengineered in 2020 was found to contain texts copied from other published papers. The paper was retracted in 2022.

== References ==