Have you ever been tricked into being part of a "scientific conference" which was nothing but a website and a hoax? A colleague just notified me that my name was listed as keynote speaker for some conference and when I looked up the website, there was suspicious information, such as scope of topics (almost anything from A-Z), a conference fee waiver for next year's event in Dubai, publication opportunities for contributors and other goodies. Is this a common thing that I just had not seen yet?
Hi,
I never heard of fake conferences and never encountered one. I wonder what is the purpose of the conferences "organizers" in initiating such hoax.
Before applying papers check their website. In journal page check the Indexing. It shows whether it is indexed in Scopus, ESCI , SCIE, SCI or it is indexed only in Google Scholar. From that you can easily know the quality of the Journal.
Nowadays any type of conference and journal is feasible. So, being an academician we must check the credentials of any conference and journals before any kind of communications.
Dear Prof. Imhof,
Unfortunately, this invitations becomes a common thing (among with predatory journals). Almost every day I received e-mail invitations all around the world to attend "virtual" conferences.
My impression is that the fake conferences serve the purpose of collecting money from conference fees. Even if only a handful of people actually pay the fee, the initiators win and make profit. Also, I think, for researchers around the world, it might be critical to publish and to present a list of conference contributions to file for a promotion in their institutions. It feels so ugly to be part of a fake system.
Just like predatory journals, predatory conferences are also thriving. Most of us know that conferences papers have not much value, but still predators are on the prowl. In the past, conferences were being done as a part of annual meetings of various professional societies.They usually use it as a fund raising exercise, and solicit donations from corporate houses related to their activities. The predators also want to raise money. They do it in the form of registration fees and donations. In order to give credence to their conference, they include the names of some outstanding scientists in their list! Don't fall prey to such predators!
I just received invitation "Become a Keynote Speaker " from
http://www.conference123.net/joinusbmc via mail from [email protected]
When I look for the Program committee, this appear:
Joining as one of the program committee members in ICFSNE2018, you will enjoy 20% off of the registration fee.
Hurry up to seize the opportunity to share your ideas with other specialists and scholars all over the world.
If you would like to join us, please send us your CV by email: [email protected]
Scandalous!!!!
My opinion is that scientific community should stand strongly against such fraud.
Thank you for all the contributions. I sort of stumbled when I read that "they include names of some outstanding scientists" as keynote speakers to trick people into contributing. I mean, I do not want to talk myself small, but if outstanding is defined by the top 25% of the colleagues in terms of citations and / or h factor, I am totally not anything near an "outstanding scientist". The trick may be that they include people / researchers who are not top in their field and who they presume would not refuse or would even be flattered by being invited as a keynote speaker of some fancy conference. So the fraud is against both the researchers who are buttered up as keynote speakers AND the prospective attendees.
The contribution from Branimir Grgur came just as I was writing my response and confirms that there is also fishing for "keynote honors" in picture. This is absolutely scandalous. I am not sure what is more scandalous, however, that there are people who want to profit from awarding those honors or that there are institutions which seem to honor researchers who engange in these doubtful activities.
It seems that online fraud is enormous bisnis not only in the matters of scientific conferences and papers, but everywhere. From the curiosity I type in the google some keywords and found that even conferencies about fraud exists:
http://www.fraudconference.com/29annual/Social-Network.aspx
"The ACFE is the world's largest anti-fraud organization and premier provider of anti-fraud training and education. Together with nearly 85,000 members, the ACFE is reducing business fraud worldwide and inspiring public confidence in the integrity and objectivity within the profession. "
Yes. The fake conferences are happening these days just like mushrooming of fake journal. I also got one such message 6 months back regarding conference which was fake.
I also get invitations to such conferences on a daily basis... They automatically crawl databases and write generic spam mails to almost anybody. Most recent example: "Your article published in JOURNAL with the title TITLE has impressed us a lot. The paper has attracted widespread attention and interest from researchers and scholars in the field of KEYWORDS."
However, I have never experienced that my name was actually used as a keynote speaker in order to convince/trick others to join the conference - kudos for that! ;-)
I agree. Fortunately, I am not as famous and not have resources to attend International Conferences. When it is in-country, it's much easier to check things out. Get invites regularly, but none so far has asked me to pay to attend.
In democratic country there are two classes: Ruler and Oppressed. Ruler class always wanted and tried to keep the oppressed in dark in every field from Primary School to Higher Education Institutions.
The oppressed class are the victims of such things. They neither got good Guide nor good information. In this way the people belonging to ruler class misuse the opportunity to cheat them and their works also.
If you would give equal opportunities to all, such type of things will not succeed.
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