An Indian paper mill featuring prominently in our recent investigation in Science and a companion piece on our website shut down its WhatsApp community six days after the stories ran, Retraction Watch has learned.
The company, called iTrilon, used the messaging platform to hawk authorship of “readymade” publications to scientists “struggling to write and publish papers in PubMed and Scopus-Indexed Journals.” It claimed to have connections at journals that allowed the mill to guarantee acceptance of most of its papers.
But on January 24, Sarath Ranganathan, iTrilon’s scientific director, deactivated the WhatsApp community he had been curating.
“That’s big,” said Siddhesh Zadey, a PhD student at Columbia University and co-founder of the India-based think tank ASAR, who joined the iTrilon community last year and was a key source for our investigation. “I think it took [Ranganathan] about two years to build such a large group on WhatsApp.”
According to an infographic from last May, the Chennai-based company at the time had published “219+ papers” for clients in “21+” countries. The size of its WhatsApp community is not clear, but it likely exceeded 1,024, the maximum number of members in a WhatsApp “group.” In the platform’s terminology, a “community” is a collection of “groups.”
The company has also taken down its website and LinkedIn profiles.
Ranganathan did not answer calls to his WhatsApp number.
Like Retraction Watch? You can make a tax-deductible contribution to support our work, subscribe to our free daily digest or paid weekly update, follow us on Twitter, like us on Facebook, or add us to your RSS reader. If you find a retraction that’s not in The Retraction Watch Database, you can let us know here. For comments or feedback, email us at [email protected].
“scientific director” needs some quotes/unquotes in the article, methinks 😉
With investigations like this one, the increasing use of the PubPeer forum system, the ongoing cat and mouse technology development such as ImageTwin, and our friendly neighborhood sleuths, I have to wonder whether the increasing risks of destroying one’s professional reputation and the consequences thereof are beginning to outweigh the cost-benefits calculated by the “cheater” market? Or, since there is no apparent threat/form like being disbarred or loss of a medical license, that cheaters gonna cheat?
Given the revelations of the papermill industry as well as very public outings of misconduct by big names at big universities/institutes, has this begun to raise awareness enough to send a “shot across the bow” for would-be cheats thus precipitating a re-calibration or even remission in this market? It would be interesting to hear some of the mea culpas (don’t laugh I can dream too) and how it has affected / changed their career paths as a much warranted warning to others.
To answer your question: no.
The last time I looked, one junk journal in my general area had published 9000 articles. That was a while ago.
This is a biopsy, not a treatment.
As happy as I am that the efforts of Science magazine and RW contributed to whatever setbacks iTrilon has experienced, the paper mill industry is analogous to metastatic cancer: One wonders when, where, and how the iTrilon tumor/s will reemerge again.