Exclusive: Mayo, Florida profs among authors of article tied to Indian paper mill

Two assistant professors at universities in the United States are coauthors of a review that appears to have been advertised for sale by the Indian paper mill iTrilon, a Retraction Watch investigation has found.

One of the professors, Yuguang Liu of Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., is also guest editor of the MDPI special issue in the journal Biosensors in which the review was published last year. The other professor, Ajeet Kaushik of Florida Polytechnic University, in Lakeland, sits on the editorial boards of Biosensors and several other titles from MDPI, Elsevier, Wiley, Springer Nature and other publishers.

An MDPI representative said Liu, who declined an interview request, had not been involved in editorial decisions regarding the paper. Meanwhile, Kaushik acknowledged his work on the article had sprung from a LinkedIn message from a researcher in India who, as we reported last week, has been offering co-authorship in return for help getting his articles published.

“This is sad,” Kaushik told us by email, adding that he had not seen “any red flags” when he agreed to collaborate on the review. 

“I contributed to this review article as an ethical co-author,” he said. “I am making it clear that my role in this article does not have any involvement of money or other exchange offers.”

The paper’s link to iTrilon became apparent during a six-month Retraction Watch investigation for Science that found paper mills had taken to bribing journal editors to ensure publication of their articles. Based in Chennai, iTrilon sells authorship of “readymade” scientific papers and gets them published through a network of editors with whom it claims to be working. The company’s website was taken down following our story.

As we reported in a companion piece to the Science article, papers advertised last year by iTrilon buoyed the research output of Dionisio Lorenzo Lorenzo Villegas, a professor and dean at Universidad Fernando Pessoa-Canarias, in Las Palmas, Spain. Lorenzo acknowledged paying the company.

The review in Biosensors is one of the six papers Lorenzo coauthored in 2023 that could be linked to iTrilon. The matching ad was posted in July and referred to a “review article” about “diagnostics for colorectal cancer,” to be submitted to a journal “indexed in PubMed, Scopus and Web of Science” with an impact factor above 3. 

These details are all consistent with the review, “Current Status and Emerging Trends in Colorectal Cancer Screening and Diagnostics,” which was submitted to Biosensors on August 29.

But Giulia Stefenelli, chair of the scientific board of MDPI, said the publisher was not investigating the paper. 

“It is important to note that establishing a direct link between the articles and the content advertised by the cited platform is not an easy process. The titles of the articles and the number of authors do not immediately correlate with the published material. Should we receive further evidence that clearly distinguishes the relationship to the publications unequivocally, we will proceed to initiate an official investigation,” Stefenelli told Retraction Watch.

Liu, who is a corresponding author of the review, did not agree to an interview. But she said in an email that she was “unaware” of the iTrilon ad matching the paper and that “I don’t think it’s related to my paper or the special issue on MDPI.”

We were unable to find contact information for the review’s first author, Shreya Singh Beniwal of Lady Hardinge Medical College, in New Delhi. Beniwal was also first author of a research article coauthored by Lorenzo, which unequivocally matched a previous ad from iTrilon and has now been retracted. 

How the authors came to collaborate on the review is only partly clear. A LinkedIn message from last spring reveals ArunSundar MohanaSundaram, an assistant professor at Sathyabama Institute of Science and Technology, in Chennai, and co-corresponding author of the review, had been proffering author slots on manuscripts to researchers who could help get them published. 

“I’m ready to offer ‘co authorship’ if you could review the work and support me as an EDITOR in reputed journals,” MohanaSundaram, who has coauthored several papers advertised for sale by iTrilon, wrote in the message, as we reported last week. He did not respond to repeated emails.

MohanaSundaram, Lorenzo and Beniwal came up with the idea for the review article, according to the statement on author contributions.

Kaushik said he had not heard of iTrilon until we reached out to him. But he acknowledged being contacted by MohanaSundaram:

Yes, I was approached by Dr. Arun on LinkedIn but at the beginning of this REVIEW ARTICLE. Then this paper moved forward by email exchanges. The similarity Index was acceptable, and all figures were either self-designed or with the permission. So, I did not see any red flags. I was involved in this article due to my credentials in the field of biosensors and nanomedicine.

Kaushik added:

Please note, that I am a young scholar and working hard to make a good name based on clean and ethical research. I generally want to help, but such incidents are centaily aletrs, and I will be more careful and reserv in the future [sic]. 

Presently, I am seeing some of the approaches (so-called shortcuts) to get easy or sponsored publications. BUT, I do not like and support such approaches.

Both Mayo Clinic and MDPI emphasized that Liu had not been involved in editorial decisions regarding the manuscript.

“The paper’s scientific review, revision, and submission process was handled by an Assistant Editor, Mila Opacic, not Dr. Liu,” Andrea Kalmanovitz, director of Communications – Media Relations at Mayo Clinic, said in an email. She did not reply to follow-up questions about how Liu had come into contact with far-flung authors linked to paper-mill articles.

According to Stefenelli at MDPI:

The article was accepted by the Section editor-in-chief of “Nano- and Micro-Technologies in Biosensors,” to which the Special issue belongs, Prof. Michael Thompson. In accordance with MDPI editorial procedure, Guest Editors are completely excluded from the peer-review process and decision-making stages for articles submitted by themselves and their colleagues. The MDPI procedure seeks for an independent assessment by a member of the Editorial Board for all cases of conflict of interest (https://www.mdpi.com/ethics#_bookmark17).

Kaushik, who is a member of the editorial board for the same section of the journal, said he had not been involved in any editorial decisions regarding the review article, nor in the selection of the journal.

Update, 1/24/24, 0930 UTC:

In an email received after this story ran, MohanaSundaram denied any ties to iTrilon and the ads matching his papers. “I am shocked to see your news article which portrays that I am involved in the insane paper mill business. I am strongly against such unethical practice which is a threat to the research fraternity and the society,” MohanaSundaram told us. “I never came across any such Advertisements and I don’t have any relationship with iTrilion [sic] or any such paper mills.”

He added that he was “always open to research collaborations” and that “For some papers, I feel that higher level of expertise (beyond my capacity) may be required to improve the quality of the manuscript. In such case, I may have approached some editorial board members or experts.”

“My intention is that Editorial board members from good journals have a great experience and expertise, hence they can guide in the best way to match the top notch quality of good journals and the trends in current and advanced research,” MohanaSundaram said. When these individuals made “significant contributions” to his papers, he said, “they “ethically” become a leader/corresponding author of the paper in due course of preparation of the final manuscript.”

“Hence, to state that I don’t have any objections in such ethical grounds, I sometimes mentioned regarding authorships in the initial communications”, MohanaSundaram told us.

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