Ashok Pandey

Ashok Kumar Pandey (born 1 January 1956) is an Indian chemist and biotechnologist, who had served as Distinguished Scientist at CSIR-Indian Institute of Toxicology Research, Lucknow, Government of India, and Executive Director at the Centre for Energy and Environmental Sustainability. With over 1450 research papers, 16 patents, 95 books, he became India's most prolific researcher. By 2018, he was one of the most highly cited researchers in the world, within the top 1% according to Web of Science; and number 1 from India by 2021. For his enormous research outputs, Human Resource Development minister Shri Prakash Javadekar honoured him as the "most outstanding researcher" in biology in 2018.

Pandey was the editor and then editor-in-chief of Elsevier's journal ''Bioresource Technology'' for over a decade. By 2025, 43 of the research papers he co-authored in the journal were retracted, as Elsevier established that he added his name in those papers and violated the journal's policies in the peer review process. In most of his papers, he added his named after he received the manuscripts, and then handled the entire peer reviewing. Elsevier also retracted several papers by different researchers which Pandey edited and handled the reviewing, but Pandey's name was there in the initial manuscripts and the authors were his collaborators in many of his publications. Provided by Wikipedia