These bogus and predatory conference invitations are becoming just as common as invitations to publish in bogus and predatory OA journals. I'd say that I get such mails for both journals and conferences on a daily basis.

Jeffrey Beall is a university librarian who has compiled a list of predatory journals - a list which has become known as the "Beall's list" http://scholarlyoa.com/publishers/

Beall has recently started turning his attention to predatory conferences, and wrote a blog on the "Entomology-2013" conference hosted by the OMICS group, a conference with near identical name to the one the Entomological Society of America (ESA) uses for their annual conference, "Entomology 2013" (did you spot the difference in names?). After writing this blog http://scholarlyoa.com/2013/01/25/omics-predatory-meetings/ the India-based OMICS group threatened to sue Beall for 1 B$ http://chronicle.com/article/Publisher-Threatens-to-Sue/139243/.

One of the reasons these conferences are fake, even if they are actually held is what Beall writes: "First, OMICS implies that its editorial board members are conference organizers by placing their names and photographs on their conference web pages, and by sending email invitations to their meetings which are “signed” by members of the editorial boards. However, many of these people never agreed to be meeting organizers, and some have never even agreed to be become OMICS editorial board members".

Markus,

I believe that (at least most of) these conferences do take place. In some countries, especially in Asia, there is a flourishing industry of companies that organize broadly based conferences to make money from it.

Best,

Dariush

Hi Markus,

I am not getting this many invitations, but since a few years it seems I get a similar invitation to China. I was flattered first to become a session chair, but I had to learn they wanted me to pay about thousand USD for participating - so, now with your question, I am not even sure if those conferences really exist.

On the other hand, I know of some, really existing, mid-european (for example, Austrian) conferences, where at least some of the "invited speakers" on the list are usually also asked to pay their participating fee.

Best,

Robert

These bogus and predatory conference invitations are becoming just as common as invitations to publish in bogus and predatory OA journals. I'd say that I get such mails for both journals and conferences on a daily basis.

Jeffrey Beall is a university librarian who has compiled a list of predatory journals - a list which has become known as the "Beall's list" http://scholarlyoa.com/publishers/

Beall has recently started turning his attention to predatory conferences, and wrote a blog on the "Entomology-2013" conference hosted by the OMICS group, a conference with near identical name to the one the Entomological Society of America (ESA) uses for their annual conference, "Entomology 2013" (did you spot the difference in names?). After writing this blog http://scholarlyoa.com/2013/01/25/omics-predatory-meetings/ the India-based OMICS group threatened to sue Beall for 1 B$ http://chronicle.com/article/Publisher-Threatens-to-Sue/139243/.

One of the reasons these conferences are fake, even if they are actually held is what Beall writes: "First, OMICS implies that its editorial board members are conference organizers by placing their names and photographs on their conference web pages, and by sending email invitations to their meetings which are “signed” by members of the editorial boards. However, many of these people never agreed to be meeting organizers, and some have never even agreed to be become OMICS editorial board members".

Thanks for the info, Bjorn. Lots of reading material. I was familiar with the Beall list but wasn't aware of his blog on conferences. The comment section of the blog is quite a shocking account of what is going on.

When I got an invitation like Markus, I asked for registration fee waiver, airplane tickets and accommodation, and they did not contact me further. So I regarded the conference as predatory, like Mr Beall said.

About Mr Beall's list, some parts are true, as there are many predatory journals, but there are also a lot that do not deserve to be in his list.

However, recently, there are many websites that discredited Mr Beall, here are some:

http://fakeconferences.blogspot.com/2013/11/prof-nicola-bellomo-sent-us-this-email.html

http://iaria-highsci.blogspot.com/

http://bogus-conferences.blogspot.com/2012/12/have-you-hear-about-jeffrey-bealls-big.html

http://jeffreybeallbogus.wordpress.com/2013/11/13/jeffreybeallbogus/#comments

I tried to paste websites like this into Mr beall's website, but unfortunately they are removed, instead of defending himself.

This make me think that maybe all this counter-webs contain true information, and Mr Beall does not want that the whole world know about it.

It is very bad that these type of invitations to the fake conference or publish in their journals become more and more popular. Some unexperienced researchers are having really big problems believing them. I do not know an optimal variant of determining their falsification but can share my experiences on them. When you receive their e-mail, pay attention for the sender email address. Usually, non-official accounts (from gmail, yahoo and others) are first sign to a caution. Even they hide their account by any official domain, you can check real IP address of sender. Also, please, pay attention for the reply address. Usually, it is different from sender address. Finally, carefully check their conferences web page, if there is not any mistakes or changing the letters, like conference and confference.

may i ask you about the case of Wessex Institute of Technology(WIT)?do you have any idea about this conferences organizing university?

Dear Shokry,

I absolutely do not know WIT conferences but in this case I always search from Internet some comments if they are somewhere. Please, read these comments and make decision as you want :) 

http://wessex-institute.blogspot.com/2013/08/85-scigen-fake-bogus-papers-exist-now.html#comment-form

I recieve this kind of emails on a daily basis too. Very annoying.

Yes, during the last few weeks, these invitations annoy me also much more frequently, almost on a daily basis as well.

 I've attended a few of the OMICS group and Zing conference series and I've generally found them okay (and yes, they are held, at least the ones in the US). They're not at the top end of star power but I think all sincere efforts should be supported and they've been around a while. In many cases, it's pay to play but it's the same with publication and page charges. 

I get spam from respected publishers, even Nature, if I end up on some mailing list accidentally. 

@Ram Samudrala - I think there is still a certain difference between getting on a mailing list from more "respected publishers" - and getting unwanted meeting invitations from anyone just because they got your email address from a recent publication. To me this is like a repetitive cold call. I once tried to ask for, if I remember right, 10.000 USD for compensating the flights and having me as session chair. They offered a "reduced" participation fee, but no compensations for travel time and talk, but continue to spam me regularly. I am sure, any serious conference committee or respected publishers would immediately stop spamming, when asked, since spamming might not be legal in most countries.

If you look at the conference web site and cannot find an address or email contact or recognizable (or web-searchable) name for the organization that is sponsoring the conference this should be a red flag. Here are some WASET (World Academy of Science, Engineering and Technology) conferences where I found myself listed as conference committee member and that I know absolutely nothing about. Since there is no address or email contact it is not easy to contact whoever is behind these conference postings. One has to register with one of these in order to even communicate with them and they have so far refused to remove my name from these despite my requests:

ICAMCM 2017 : 19th International Conference on Applied Mathematics and Computational Mechanics. London, United Kingdom, April 24 - 25, 2017

ICIPE 2015 : 17th International Conference on Inverse Problems in Engineering. Kyoto, Japan, November 12 - 13, 2015

ICTAM 2015 : 17th International Conference on Theoretical and Applied Mechanics. Rome, Italy, September 17 - 18, 2015

ICTAM 2015 : 17th International Conference on Theoretical and Applied Mechanics. London, United Kingdom, August 20 - 21, 2015

ICTCM 2015 : 17th International Conference on Theoretical and Computational Mechanics. Dubai, UAE, December 23 - 24, 2015

ICATES 2015 : 17th International Conference on Advances in Tribology and Engineering Systems. London, United Kingdom, September 25 - 26, 2015

This might be something for social media lawyers and legislators to deal with. In the meantime caveat emptor.

For some more on WASET:

http://www.internetlawcentre.co.uk/remove-waset-lawyers

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Academy_of_Science,_Engineering_and_Technology

http://scholarlyoa.com/2014/08/28/predatory-publisher-organizes-conference-using-same-name-as-legitimate-conference/

http://academicfrauds.blogspot.com/2013/10/waset-bogus-waset-fake-academic-fraud.html

http://fakeconferences.blogspot.com/2014/11/fake-conferences-of-waset.html

https://plus.google.com/111668260744154762636/posts/QvKNSetQw4M

Beware if you get invitations from Zing Conferences, or from organizations that have conferences hosted by them. I registered for a conference with Zing Conferences a month ago. I haven't been to any of their organized conferences before, as well, the agenda wasn't out even though the conference was going to happen 3 months later. So I was a little doubtful. Good thing that I only had to pay a deposit of $95. However, several days later, they emailed me to say that the conference was cancelled (!) and said that I should email them back for a refund. I emailed them back, no response. Tried again two other times, no response. Also tried their online chat (they are located in the UK), no response. I've finally given up, concluded the worst and called my credit card to dispute the charge. Think twice before associating with them. 

May you kindly assist, I want to submit my abstract to the conference being organised by Unique Conferences Canada, and the International Center for Research & Development, it is titled " Fifth International Conference on Climate Change Adaptation 2016 (CCA 2016)" and will be held from 09-10 October ,2016 in Toronto, Canada. Is this a genuine conference? Please help because I have no idea how to determine authenticity of conference organisers.

Hi Lazarus. Regarding international conferences, I would advise you to stick to those promoted and supported by the corresponding scientific association in the international level. I'm not in the field of climate sciences, thus I can't tell which that would be. Yet, if you are going abroad and spending you hardly earned money, you should choose the one with greatest visibility worldwide.

Dear Lazarus,

You can try googling

1. the organizer: Unique Conferences Canada, and the International Center for Research & Development + bogus+ fake + legitimate etc, and try to open relevant titles to get information.

2. As this is the fifth, you may be can find the previous International Conference on Climate Change Adaptation on the internet, just googling the title of the conference, and look for comments from attendees, if any, and see what they said about the conference

3. Googling the title of the conference + bogus+ fake + legitimate etc and open relevant titles

4. Open the website, and look at the plenary speakers, choose 1-2 who's name is familiar in your filed, look for their e-mail address, and email them whether they will really give a speech in the conference. (Looking for email address: Google the name in google scholar, choose one of their publications, open the article, and from the article you usually can get the email address).

Good luck,

Jeanne A. Pawitan

Vinicius and Jeane thank you so much for your assistance. I will do as per your advice.

thanks for the info 

what about this conference 

http://www.theires.org/conference.php?dt=2016-05&place=New%20Zealand

is it real or fake ???? 

Fake by the look of it! And that +91- going to an Indian number is spurious for a organization like this! : (

Dear Rajesh,

I think that you misunderstood my post. I did not mention OMICS, as I have no experience attending OMICS conference or submitting to OMICS journals. So I can not judge anything about OMICS.

I wrote : " When I got an invitation like Markus, ....." it was meant in general, not OMICS.

I agree with you that Mr. Beall is not 100% right, you can open the website that I posted to read some comments on Mr. Beall, though I am not sure whether the comments are right or wrong.

However, I saw that in his newest release of predatory publishers, some are omitted, maybe they have posted an appeal and proved that they are not predatory, like MDPI was in the list of June 2015, but not in the list of 2016.

My suggestion for you (if you are an employee of OMICS) is to send an appeal to Mr Beall with prove that OMICS is not predatory, I think that if you can convince him, he will remove OMICS from his list. Good luck.

http://foodprocessing.global-summit.com is fake or genuine? 

I would advise you to find a better conference than http://foodprocessing.global-summit.com/

7th world summit on Plant genomics, Bangkok, is genuine?

Any on this list of 1000+ conferences organised by the OMICS group are most likely fake:

http://www.conferenceseries.com

 is 5th International Conference on Management and Education Innovation (ICMEI 2017) genuine?

I had attended few conferences of Conference series but those are quite better. I am now going to attend 13th European pathology congress at Milan, Italy. I was an attendee of the previous conference of European pathology congress but that was quite good but not as good as my expectation. I would like to suggest please attend such conferences but there are some organizers who are using a fake name of the conference series, so be careful before commit yourself in such conferences. Visit http://goo.gl/po17fm for the pathology congress.

Markus,

Your message/statement is still valid. We are overfloded by predatory journals and predatory conference invitations. Can someone look into iinnovincconferences.com ? I have got an invitation from http://breastcancer.innovincconferences.com/  "because of your eminence in the field". I am in the field of photomedicine, not breast cancer research.Obviously a spam!

Hey Pål,

"eminence in the field" is something predatory conferences/journals really like. I have been identified as an "eminence" in renal cell carcinoma & bell's palsy although that is not even closely related to my expertise.

Innovinc is listed on Beall's list, so should be taken with A LOT of care:

http://scholarlyoa.com/?s=innovinc

Greetings, David

The Beall site is empty. https://scholarlyoa.com/publishers/

Due to the lawsuit?

This is not good.

That's bad!

Do you have any more info? Since it really seems odd to leave the site up but take down all the content...

Seems like the content has been removed around the 12th of January, the latest date for which there is still an entry in the web archive.

http://web.archive.org/web/20170112125427/https://scholarlyoa.com/publishers/

Hi David and Randolph,

For a completely unrelated matter, I looked Beall's list up this morning only to discover that it was an empty website. Gives me the creeps. Something really bad is going on. Thank you David for supplying the link to the web archive. http://web.archive.org/web/20170112125427/https://scholarlyoa.com/publishers/ 

Beall declined to comment. But a CU Denver spokesperson told ScienceInsider that Beall made a “personal decision” to take down his list of low-quality journals that charge authors a fee to publish, often with little or no review or editing. The spokesperson says the blog was not hacked, nor was it taken down as a result of legal threats, and Beall will remain on the school’s faculty. The spokesperson could not confirm whether the blog's removal is permanent.

http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/01/mystery-controversial-list-predatory-publishers-disappears

I used to think such 'invitations' are targeted mainly at researchers from my part of the world; now I know it is a global issue.

Watch out for " 3 party scame "

Blimey. I came across WASET while looking for some Entomological Conference in 2017 (i missed ICE 2016 in Orlando). Well i had a hunch it is a fake site. Well thanks to everybody here for confirming this unhealthy scam.

Hello Researchers,

Is "Magnus  Science Group" Predatory. Kindly let me know

Hello,

This is the most recent e-mail invitation I received regarding being invited as a speaker: http://geriatrics-gerontology.conferenceseries.com/scientific-program

Can something happen if you submit your abstract and information (e.g. address, telephone number)? -- before checking other sources, I may have been tricked. Luckily, no payments were made.

Do not make any payments no matter what and as for your contact information, expect to get spam.

They still have listed speakers and sponsors that are neither, and I know this because I contacted about a dozen of them and they all said that their name/brand were being used without permission. I would not trust OMICs/ConferenceSeriesLLC on anything ever, period. 

Is Magnus conference a bogus conference organizer?

Dear all, 

just found 2 additional resources which might supplement Beall's list:

- ScientificSpam: A blog and a DNSBL which you can use to filter science SPAM.

- Flaky Scientific Journals: A blog & list of bad publishers (with a smaller focus than Baell's list)

Hope that helps!

Greetings, David

http://www.scientificspam.net

http://flakyj.blogspot.ch

I have got an invitation of http://physics.conferenceseries.com/call-for-abstracts.php

My system warns me not to open this site.

Conferenceseries LLC (aka Omics International) are now spamming Mendeley. I have already reported them, but you should too if they contact you via Mendeley, RG or similar.

Hello. I have been receiving requests by email to be a speaker at a international healthcare conference. After several emails, the sender (a program manager from Canada) wrote sending invitations and follow up invitations. I responded by saying thank you but the cost is not in my budget. He wrote back immediately offering me two nights at the Hampton Inn.  Many red flags.  After a search online, I discovered that they have several conferences listed for 2017 under numerous titles, etc. There are No past conferences, No plenary speakers listed, and they request that you don't ask the hotel about the conference as they will have No information. Here is the information:

Greetings from Scient Global Conferences

Good morning. I hope this email finds you well.

Already we contacted you earlier. Since we have not received any response from you, we are taking the liberty to invite you to join again in our Nursing Conference-2017 in Las Vegas, U.S.A

It’s our sincere pleasure to invite you to speak at Global Conference on Nursing and Healthcare going to be held during June 19-21, 2017 at Las Vegas, USA with the theme “Advanced Practice in Nursing towards Better Healthcare”

Global Nursing-2017 offers a number of unique opportunities to enrich your career. You can learn new approaches to clinical practice, fine-tune your skills, work with state-of-the-art technology and learn from professionals at the forefront of medical advances

Please consider this communication as a personal invitation to you and all your colleagues. If you are interested submit you’re abstract as early as possible, so that after reviewing it would be easy for the organizing committee to guide you for further proceedings.

For Abstract submission: http://scientonline.org/nursing/abstract-submission.php

For more details please visit: http://scientonline.org/nursing/

We look forward to meeting with you in Las Vegas.

Thanks and Regards

Ankit Dabur

Program Manager

GCNH-2017

364 Bradford drive

Sarnia, Ontario

Canada N7S 5K7

Email: [email protected]

Hi all. I plan to attend a conference this july, hosted by Sapienza university of rome, and cbees. Is this legit? (icget 2017)

http://www.icget.org

http://new.cbees.org/index.php?m=content&c=index&a=lists&catid=21

Regarding the post by Annette Cannon, sometimes it's amusing to check out the address given by the conference organiser on Google maps street view. The address for the Program Manager for your nursing meeting is a quiet suburban street. The program manager gave their home address? Or more likely, it's a completely bogus address. No phone number given of course, another red flag.

Indeed.  I saw it was the address of many of the similar looking bogus conferences.  I did write him back and ask why there were no Plenary Speakers, etc and no previous conferences.  He said it was their first one (of course his language was broken).  He requested that I send my 700.00 again.  I hope a lot of people are not getting scammed.

On predatory congresses, symposia and meetings, these guidelines may be useful:

Teixeira da Silva, J.A., Sorooshian, S., Al-Khatib, A. (2017) Cost-benefit assessment of congresses, meetings or symposia, and selection criteria to determine if they are predatory. Walailak Journal of Science and Technology 14(4): 259-265.

http://wjst.wu.ac.th/index.php/wjst/article/view/3516

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/313860094

Article Cost-benefit assessment of congresses, meetings or symposia,...

Thank you.

Happy  to  come  across  this  discussion .  Thanks all  for  the  interesting  and  very  useful   details !

too bad the Beall's list of conferences and publishers had to close

Very useful information indeed. Can anyone comment on the authenticity of below mentioned conference:

6th European Conference on Predictive , Preventive and Personalized Medicine & Molecular Diagnostics September 14-15, 2017 Edinburgh, Scotland.

The clue is in "conferenceseries".

Thank you so much for the info. and for the warning ... Today I received this email 

"The Human Rights International Organization, invites you to participate in the 2017 educational symposium on Child sexual abuse, such as' Child Marriage, Human Trafficking, A Solution to Global Terrorism and Anti-Slavery. the educational symposium will be taking place from June 26th to 30th 2017 at the conference place in Texas, USA."; it came from a bigpond e-address ... I think is another "predatory congress / seminar"

Greetings all,

Thank you for the input. Any idea about Virology 2017. It supposed to be held in Toronto at the end of October.

Respectfully

My paper was accepted for a paper presentation under this conference:

International Conference on Psychology, Language and Teaching (ICPLT)

Tokyo, Japan, 6th-7th August, 2017

This conference was managed by International Institute of Engineers and RESEARCHERS (IIER) with website address 

http://theiier.org/Conference2017/Japan/9/ICPLT/

IS THIS A LEGITIMATE?

Hi all,

I just published an article in the Aesthetic Surgery Journal  about these predatory conferences which may be helpful. I've attached a screenshot of the first page here. Feel free to write to me for the full PDF: [email protected]. The prevalence of these predatory publishers, journals, and conferences is increasing and so many doctors, scientists, and researchers fall prey. With Beall's list being pulled down I hope it will only be a matter of time until someone picks up the baton. 

In the meantime, an archive version of Beall's work may be found here: https://goo.gl/Z3y9S7.

This is a topic of interest for me and I appreciate everyone sharing their experiences and views. The more we help educate, the faster we can force and end to these criminal enterprises!

Phaedra Cress

Executive Editor, Aesthetic Surgery Journal

[email protected]

we get a lot of invitations too-especially from China

I got a lot of invitations too (invitations as speaker, session chair etc). They are mostly organized in China, mostly outside of your field, mostly without a name of the organizing society and no information on sponsorships. Just today an invitation as invited speaker invitation to EMN meeting in Florida. What is EMN? I am working in the area of environmental medicine, so it is presumably not my area, if it exists at all.

International Institute of Engineers and RESEARCHERS (IIER) website looks like the typical scam used by predators. I highly doubt Google Scholar is a sponsor and none of their claimed sponsors is hyper-linked. That is a sure sign that they are fraudulently claiming the sponsors.

This is the second sign that they are fakes and scammers: they advertise for Board Members and will give you - Being an Advisory/Editorial Member you will get special discount of 20% at any Conference or Journal Registration from the second year onwards of your association. 

File this one under scamming predators is my opinion.

Hi all, 

I have recently published three papers on how to distinguish fake/bogus journals and conferences from the real once.

I think these papers could be helpful in selecting a right conference or journal to publish your invaluable papers.

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11948-014-9595-z

https://link.springer.com/journal/11948/23/1/page/1

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11948-017-9906-2  

You can also find the full papers in my profile.

Regards,

Amin

There are several of us who were invited to speak at the World Education Day in Dalian, China in late September. It was difficult to pay registration as it was bundled with the hotel rooms. Once we got registered, we began to contact the conference chair, who has not responded to our email for nearly a week. We are beginning to be a bit suspicious. Can anyone tell us if this is a legitimate conference? If this is a hoax, we need to get our money back!

Another scientist asked about WED, you can read it here: http://www.serendipity35.net/index.php?/archives/3375-Is-There-Really-a-World-Education-Day-Conference.html

My suggestion: ask  Dr. Shuji Nakamura, who will be the keynote speaker

"Dr. Shuji Nakamura obtained B.E., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering from the University of Tokushima in Japan. He joined Nichia Chemical Industries Ltd. in 1979. In 1989, he started blue LEDs using group-III nitride materials. Nakamura developed the first III nitride-based blue/green LEDs III nitride-based violet laser diodes.

Dr. Nakamura the University of California, Santa Barbara in 1999. He is currently the Research Director of the Solid State Lighting & Energy Electronics Center and The Cree Professor in Solid State Lighting and Display. His research includes MOCVD, bulk crystal growth and device fabrication of gallium nitride (GaN). He received the 2006 Millennium Technology Prize for his invention of revolutionary new energy-saving light sources and the 2014 Nobel Laureate in Physics for the invention of efficient blue, which have enabled bright and energy-saving white light sources. Dr. Nakamura is also the co-founder of Soraa Inc. "

Google for his e-mail, and ask his opinion.

or, you can ask the opinion of the many renowned speakers listed, just google to get their e-mails.

Moreover, invited speakers are usually get registration fee waived, get travel cost, and get the hotel paid. And sometimes a fee for your speech. You got invited, am I right?? I  would ask for that, if I was invited. However, if they do not provide all of  that, and I am interested to join, I will ask the listed speakers of their opinion.

Please help, is Conference series a predatory group of conference organizers or are these legitimate?

Conferenceseries LLC (aka Omics International) are highly suspicious and have listed people as speakers that are not speakers and supporters that are not supporters. I know this because I have contacted people and sponsors listed by them that knew nothing of it.

Avoid them is the recommendation.

There were two of us who originally planned to attend, but an investigation by our university, we cancelled. There was too much smoke, not to be a fire.

Yes i also recommend not to share in conferenceseries and Waset

I am invited to the world ophthalmology conference 2018 Dubai to be a member of the organizing committee but this looks suspicious...the WOC i know is world ophthalmology congress not conference...can some one investigate this for me..

I recently got an invitation to give a speech on my research topic from Bit Congress Organizing Committee for the conference AnalytiX -2018 to be held at Miami, USA. Can anyone highlight on this ?  Is it a spam or predatory conference ?

Dear Sasmita Acharya,

this is highly likley to be a predatory conference. Check: 

http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/dr-madhukar-pai/predatory-conferences-academia_b_12467834.html

Bit Congress Inc is mentioned there.

Dear Sasmita Acharya,

this is highly likley to be a predatory conference. Check: 

http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/dr-madhukar-pai/predatory-conferences-academia_b_12467834.html

Bit Congress Inc is mentioned there.

 Does anyone know if this one is real or a spam?

https://www.ierek.com/events/al-azhars-14th-international-conference/ ?

 Can anyone help me to comment about the following conference in Paris

http://drhss.org/conference/200 

Is this '2nd International Conference on Pollution Control and Sustainable Environment

October 5-6, 2017 London, UK'  a spam or a predatory conference ?

As an early career researcher, I will recommend against soliciting with conference.series.com and its related partners. I was invited as a speaker for an unrelated conference and when I said I had no budget, they gave me free accommodation and reduced fees. I became suspicious and searched online before arriving at Beall's List. This list saved me from unnecessary link with predator journals/conferences. However, I recently found myself in an organizing committee of conferences that I was never informed of. I dislike this and wish someone could take action against such unethical use of my profile from the internet/RG.

I received today an invitation to speak at one of these dubious conferences (Euro Chemistry Conference 2018,  Scient Global Conferences).  Many have asked how you can find out whether such an invitation is from a predatory organisation. If, as in this case, it is a chemistry conference, it is easy: simply consult the list of events from The Royal Society of Chemistry (http://www.rsc.org/events/international).  Imagine my surprise, that conference was not listed!!

After the withdrawal of the original list of predatory publishers known as Beall's list (see ref. about in Nature) in response to "threats and politics," it seems that an updated copy is available in: http://beallslist.weebly.com/ .

http://beallslist.weebly.com/

https://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v544/n7651/full/544416b.html

This month I received two invitations to "21st World Congress on Nursing Pharmacology and Nursing Education" and "Technological Innovations in Surgical Nursing 2017 Conference". These are in the conferenceseries.com this site always send invitations to this kind of conference, and usually try to make us pay for something in the conference.

These is just one another way for the predatory science that we have now a days. 

Majority are out there to make money. They will Appeal to anything within a scientist  to motivate them to release their resources (Money).in the name of conference.

I think they know the importance of a conference to scientist and that's exactly what they intend to explore.

If the  predatory journals are on the increase, simply for money, Why won't the Predatory conference organizer also be on the increase!

Dear Willem H Koppenol

I also received this email but I'm not agree with your comment. RSC doesn't collect all conferences about chemistry that exist in the world. I think that only collects the conferences that are related to RSC or submitted by Organizer committee to RSC.

For example, in November will be go a conference on Porto (Portugal), co-organized by Elsevier and doesn't appear on RSC list http://emec18.eventos.chemistry.pt http://www.rsc.org/events/calendar/2017/11

I have received an invitation to give a plenary lecture at a conference held in San Antonio, about astrophysics ans particle physics, 2017 nov 13-15 :

https://astrophysics.conferenceseries.com/scientific-program

The cost for registration was $1000. 

I saw that a french colleague, Jean Michel Alimi, director of the french laboratory LUTH, (laboratory Universe Theory)  in Meudon, was mentioned as a featured speaker. I wrote to him. He immediately replied he did not intend to present anything there. Later his name was removed from the list 

I asked the organizers to have the proceedings of the last meeting, held in Dallas, dec 2016.

No answer. 

I saw that Steven Weinberg was mentioned as a member of the organization comity. 

I wrote to the Indian girl, Preity Sae, who is the contact for this meeting, saying "some sponsors would accept to support this mission. But they would like to have the confirmation that Weinberg is in this comity." 

No answer. 

It's clear. This conference isa call for suckers. 

I checked Beall's list, but pcscongress.org (Pioneer Century Science) is not listed. I believe this organization can also join the list. I'm reading part of the long list of messages here relate to this subject. Can we help Beall's list, with the hope that this way we will combat this anti-science industry? 

Hi, do you know anything about these series of conferences:

International Conference on Psychology & Language Research

I am tempted by the 6th ICPLR 2018 - International Conference on Psychology & Language Research (Portugal), 24 May – 25 May, 2018-

It can be found on many lists and I thought of applying but they seem to hold too many a year and the organizers seem to be in India, the fee is significant 300 dolars plus 15 dolars admin fee and I am a bit worried whether it is genuine or not. Please help. I feel a bit naive here.

Anna

P.S.

Their main website https://gplra.org/conference.php

can also be found here: https://conferencealerts.com/show-event?id=188838

The organizers are : Global Psychology and Language Research Association (GPLRA)

Dr. Lazarus

https://www.facebook.com/profi le.php?id=100013534776833Dr.Anupam :- https://www.faceb ook.com/krishna.akrishna.79

Anna, I am not sure but they have an error on the main home tab (odd for language research) and the publisher which publishes the articles, GRDS PUBLISHING, is on the Bealls list: https://clinicallibrarian.wordpress.com/2017/01/23/bealls-list-of-predatory-publishers/

I would try to find something else ;)

What about CONAL.  People are now receiving invitation from [email protected] to present.  The name suggest that you should receive alerts and not invitation.

Some take place and others don’t. There isn’t time to respond to all of them, and some are not credible.

Hi everyone!. If someone could answer me What means a RVSP invitation? i.e. what difference is between a normal invitation and a RVSP invitation?? Is just a polite way to ask for an answer???

Interesting thread of answers. Can someone please suggest a list of authentic conferences in the field of business and management?? Preferably the ones you have attended and know for sure are reliable....thank you

I receive such invitations on a daily basis, but, for the first time, this year I convinced the organizing committee to waive off my registration fee. However, in a 'do ut des' game, they asked me to "suggest ... colleagues and friends for the conference as speakers or for poster presentation and ... to promote our conference in your university...".

For those who are wondering the name of the conference...

http://colossalfacet.com/cancer-conference/index.php

I also tried to get in touch with Prof. Harald zur Hausen, Nobel Prize in Physiology / Medicine 2008, who is allegedly the main podium presenter, to have confirmation of his participation to the conference. Unfortunately, I got not reply from him.

Still thinking about calling it off.

Stefano Falone

Dear All

Its a routine practice now in academia and we regularly receiving such mails.

Having recently fallen foul of a predatory conference organising company I am compelled to add to this blog and advise any researcher to avoid conferenceseries.com (also contactable (?) under '[email protected]'; '[email protected]' or '[email protected]'). This is not a bogus front - the conference was organised (in fact two were running simultaneously in the same venue), however only 4 of the 26 organised speakers turned up, none of the poster presenters and a handful of delegates. None of the scientific organising committee or session chairs were present, and when they were contacted they either were unaware that they were involved in the conference, or had been approached a year ago and had then heard nothing more from the organisers. Of course the company will not reply to any correspondence. According to their website they run dozens of conferences a year, probably all as badly organised. They seem to be owned by the OMICS consortium and judging by other contributors should be avoided at all costs.