Meet our research integrity experts: Ela Pallipatti Mohan

During his 12 years with Elsevier, Senior Ethics Expert Elavenhil Pallipatti Mohan opens in new tab/window — or Ela, as he likes to be called — has found himself repeatedly drawn to the field of ethics. He started as a journal manager before moving to the Scopus team, ultimately joining the Research Integrity & Publishing Ethics Center of Expertise in May 2023. A year later, he was promoted to his current role.

At every stage of his career, Ela has been intrigued by the ethical issues he came across. His interest was deepened when he realized that the impact of ethical issues stretched not only throughout companies but across institutions and even industries.

“It always motivated me to understand the basics of ethics,” he said, speaking from his office in Chennai, India. “I’ve always felt connected to this part of the business.”

Ela has taken up his new role at a critical time, as fast-developing new technologies coincide with higher demand in the scientific world for sharing new knowledge and an increase in fraudulent research. Despite an increasing number of retractions or corrections, “it is essential to recognize that most scholarly content published worldwide remains valid and of high quality,” he said.

“At Elsevier, we are dedicated to preventing the publication of or transparently correcting any unethical content in our journals.” The latest data-driven technologies are also enabling Elsevier to improve capacity to detect and prevent the publication of unethical content. Ela is on the frontlines leading a busy, growing team of Publishing Ethics Screening Analysts whose main task is to verify any ethical issues flagged by Elsevier’s bespoke technology at key stages between submission and acceptance.

Technological innovations

To achieve that mission, the Research Integrity & Publishing Ethics Center of Expertise works closely with the data science team to build advanced technological systems that support the detection of potential ethical concerns and provide leads for further investigations. The first of these systems, launched in late 2023, focuses on post-publication investigations. By using this tool, ethics experts can identify networks involved in ethical manipulations more quickly and determine the most appropriate corrective actions to take. The second, more recent innovation is a research integrity checking tool that uses cutting-edge technology to screen submitted manuscripts for potential breaches of standards and policies. In a critical feedback loop, one system helps inform the other so the team can continuously improve accuracy and ensure agility as new trends and behaviors emerge.

“As soon as the paper has been submitted to Elsevier journals, this tool will automatically identify potential ethical breaches,” he said. “It will alert our team, and we will make sure that these manuscripts do not get published in any of our journals.

“By using this tool, we are aiming to ensure that only trustworthy content is published in our journals. I’m privileged to be part of this innovative journey because it is something pioneering that we are doing across Elsevier.”

A two-pronged approach: Humans solve a case flagged by technology

Elsevier’s home-grown technology is proving a powerful partner in pushing back against fraudulent papers, but human action is also an important element — and one that Ela is particularly attuned to.

With the help of the post-publication investigative tools, he identified a series of unethical practices connected to a special issue.

“I thoroughly investigated each published article to verify the identified issues and my own observations,” he said. “Once that was done, and following discussion with the journal editor and publisher, we contacted the authors to provide them an opportunity to respond to the allegations and decided to issue a temporary editorial expression of concern for the papers. Currently, we are working with the editors and publisher to review our concerns and the author responses to reach a conclusion and take the next steps. It could be retractions, it could be corrigenda, it could be no further action, or an Editor’s note of exoneration.”

The investigation process is not a one-off approach, but a long-term problem-solving process that ultimately enhances the trustworthiness of the journal, he explained.

“We will be able to correct the scientific record while simultaneously implementing preventive actions, like improving the journal workflow and enhancing the ethical checks. So that will help safeguard trust in the published content.”

The human factor

Most of Ela’s day is spent interacting with his team and with the global network of legal, data and tech teams, as well as editors, authors and journal publishers. It’s one of the most enjoyable and important parts of his job, he said.

While his primary tools are always data and logic, a human-centered approach often helps him better understand the background and motivations behind his cases.

“Your intuition in understanding human beings will help you in your investigations and finding appropriate results,” he said. “When you are investigating and trying to find a solution, you’re going to implement everything based on the data and the facts that you’re finding in your investigation, but [intuition] helps me in connecting the dots, like why this particular network happened and the story behind it.”

His people skills also help him build empathy with his team and empower them to achieve better results.

“I have a deep interest in observing and listening to human beings,” he explained. “Understanding my team’s requirements means that I’ll be able to work better for my team as well as for the Center of Expertise as a whole.”

Upholding research integrity: Advice to the community

Ela believes that establishing transparency and integrity in research practices is a fundamental challenge facing academic publishing and one that starts with training researchers.

For researchers, he gives the following advice:

Familiarize yourself with global research, ethical standards and integrity standards from your own institution and train yourself on research integrity practices. And whenever you are conducting any research, please be sure to get all the ethical approvals and consent from whoever is involved as part of the research. And please conduct your research with respect and fairness.

Ultimately, he said, research integrity is a shared responsibility: “Ensuring inclusion in academic publishing to achieve fairness and representation presents a fundamental ethical challenge that requires a lot of attention from everyone in the research world.

“I firmly believe that research integrity and publishing ethics go beyond mere policies or rule books,” he added. “It’s a shared responsibility of everyone within the scientific community and scholarly communication business. It is crucial that we work together to safeguard science so that we can ensure science is one of the most trustworthy systems of society. It’s what we are going to hand over to our future generation — the repository of genuine information that can guide their progress and development.”