Ashok Kumar Pandey (born 1 January 1956[1]) is an Indian chemist and biotechnologist,[2][3] 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.
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.
[13][14] In 1982, Pandey got an appointment as a scientist at the National Sugar Institute, Kanpur, where he worked till 1985.
After working there for a year, he joined CSIR National Institute for Interdisciplinary Science and Technology (CSIR-NIIST) at Trivandrum as a full scientist in 1987.
[15] He retired from CSIR-NIIST in 2015 and became Distinguished Scientist at the Center of Innovative and Applied Bioprocessing (CIAB), an autonomous institute of the Department of Biotechnology, Government of India.
[8] Pandey joined the editorial board of Elsevier's journal Bioresource Technology in 2004, becoming the executive editor in 2010 and editor-in-chief in 2011.
He described a new species of soil bacteria in 2012, named Micrococcus niistensis after his work place at the time, the National Institute for Interdisciplinary Science and Technology (NIIST).
The publisher, International Journal of Systematic and Evolutionary Microbiology, retracted the paper on the ground that there was not "sufficient evidence" to identify the reported specimen as a new species as the researchers failed to deposit the pure culture of the specimen required for taxonomic validation.
According to Elsevier, the reason was "violations of the journal's policies on authorship and conflict of interest related to the submission and review of this [specified in the retraction note] paper.
[8] 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.
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.