BIN IT!

(having said that, I wished we had a way to stop this spamming)

I engaged with Longdom Conferences when they approached me in early 2019, and here is what I found:

• EVERY EVENT is listed AT LEAST TWICE on their website (i.e. same date, same venue, every so slightly different title); this makes them look busy and important.
• After the initial approach by 'Charles' over LinkedIn, all email exchange was done with 'somebody'@gmail.com (NEVER a a good indication of credibility!).
• They asked me to send them my 'electronic signature', so that they could add that to the conference certificate, because I was such 'a highly eminent person in my field of research'; when I refused to hand over my signature, I was offered to just give a presentation.
• In email exchange, they claim to be 'not for profit' (hence the charging of big fees and saying 'no' to asking for travel support even for 'invited key-note speakers'), but their company registration is a 'SA' (i.e. Societe Anonyme = public limited company, registered in Belgium (registration number: 0719323987)). The two shareholders both have (the same) registered addresses in Andhra Pradesh (which seems to be 'CBIT College'), and the Brussels company address provided on their website also houses a gazillion other companies.
• By pure chance, I found that they had added my name and photo to their list of 'Organising Committee Members', without ever asking me, or telling me (or consulting me on anything concerned with the organisation of the conference); I asked them to remove me from that list.

I actually went to their conference, because it was local and cost me all of a metro-ticket, and I found no more than 10 people sitting in a small, dark room; every one I spoke to had been approached as a speaker, and had agreed to attend (because it was local), but had not paid any conference fee.

So, I come back to my opening question: How can we stop this? Do we really have to assume that every speaker invite that does not immediately offer travel expenses / accommodation / waiving of fees in the first approach is illegitimate? Or do we have to engage in an a (predictable) email exchange with a predictable outcome every time to sift the good from the bad?

Did anybody notice that their fab conference website is NOT GDPR compliant, and that their privacy policy is more than incomplete?

While the website is beautifully designed, I think there are some red flags in the website.

In their sponsor page, they wrote on the address section "Mail us to know more! No doubt you have lots of queries... Why not get in touch..! Drop us your query with details and we will call you right away", instead of the physical address which is a little bit unprofessional for a credible conference.

In their contact page, they only gave the contact number and the email address, and not the recipient name who is usually an academician tied in an institution.

In the about page, there is no definite and specific introduction about the people behind the conference. Regarding this matter, the committee is usually listed (e.g., Organizing Committee, Conference Program Committee, Publications Committee, etc.) although the Organizing Committee is on a separate page but it has only 3 members. Imagine running an international conference with only 3 people.

Their publication "Bioenergetics: Open Access" is not also SCOPUS-Indexed although the other one "Journal of Nuclear Energy Science and Power Generation Technology" is.

Nevertheless, I'm not saying that the conference is entirely predatory, however, I'm giving you an advice to validate it more thoroughly. If you know another conference with a history of publishing articles for a long time, with a credible organizing committee, and tied with known industry and academic institutions, then I think it's better if you choose it instead.

Dear Julio Chiquetto ,

The publisher linked to (or behind) the conferences you mentioned is “Longdom Publishing SL” and is listed in the update of Beall’s list:

https://beallslist.weebly.com/#update

One example of their journals is “Advances In Medical Ethics (Longdom Publishing)” with the critical remark (2019): "When asked, one editor attest to the fact that his editorship was forged. Publisher is on the Beall’s list". See:

https://ethicsblog.crb.uu.se/2018/05/02/where-to-publish-and-not-to-publish-in-bioethics-the-2018-list/

There are some indications that this publisher is originally (or at least somehow linked to) OMICS (‘known’ for their dubious conferences and publication practices). Like their journal “Endocrinology & Metabolic Syndrome” see for example:

https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/63d1/efbbcb301c617ad3a921413d6fce814a64b1.pdf

https://www.longdom.org/open-access/rare-genetic-cases-of-heterotopic-ossification-2161-1017.1000105.pdf

If you go to the OMICS journal “Journal of Metabolic Syndrome” and go to 'related journals' and click on “Endocrinology & Metabolic Syndrome” you are redirected to Longdom Publishing.

Back to your question, it is better to check first and use for example:

https://www.exordo.com/blog/9-signs-this-is-a-fake-conference/

Best regards.

Dear Manuel B. Garcia and Rob Keller,

thanks a lot for your answers.

Well, I did have a strange feeling about it, and all these aspects you mentioned helped to explain the situation more clearly.

After a little thought, I decided not to go.

I replied their e-mail today saying that I was no longer attending the conference and my message was returned because the e-mail address no longer exists! It makes everything even more dodgy...

I really appreciate your help and instructions. Nowadays, it's really easy to fake something, but now I am more aware.

Best regards,

Julio

Dear Julio,

Thank you for posting this here. I was recently invited as a speaker to a Longdom conference in London under similar circumstances. First of all, I found it odd that an international conference would invite speakers on LinkedIn and WhatsApp messenger instead of sending out a formal email. Also, they seemed very persistent with regards to an early registration. They offered a remarkable discount plus accommodation fees, which was fine. Although I had to withdraw my abstract because I was teaching on the day of the conference. A few days later I was invited to another conference in Vancouver, this time by Scientific Federation, and on LinkedIn again. Also it might be a coincidence, but both persons contacted me from India. I declined the second offer as the conference website looked veeery not authentic!

It is sad that scammers have begun to pray on academics, as if we have so much money to give away so easily!

Best regards,

Makan

Dania Nashed

Longdom is OMICS "publisher" .... Pay attention to this fraudolent pseudo publishing group

I too was invited today itself, when i searched their website for the said conference i was shocked to read in the registration section that the speakers need to register by paying a registration fee. I think the publishers are devising clever ways on getting business. Also one of my colleague asked me if i can attend the conference as a speaker or a session chair, i was free and i said yes, but he told that i have to pay the registration charges, travel and accommodation too. i refused. If some one is inviting you as a speaker the lest we can expect is we dont have to pay the registration fees, We know there are budget considerations and not all organisers can pay the travel and accommodation cost, however asking to pay for everything is a bit too far.

I just reviewed a paper "published" in one of their journals (The Journal of Hotel & Business Management) and there are several gaps to say the least. At first I thought this may have been due to the authors not being native speakers however I think Longdom is questionable to say the least.

Got a message from an account named Angelina Jonas on LinkedIn asking me to send a manuscript of my work to them. She claimed to be 'Managing Editor of Longdom Publishing' yet her profile had no other experience or info listed. She was very pushy and kept trying to get me to submit my manuscripts but I kept declining. After doing some research and talking to some academics, I found them on two blacklists in different forums (Bealls and Dolos). The website looks incredibly dodgy as well considering their contact info is a Whatsapp number. Be very VERY careful when it comes to using social media accounts, if something feels a little off, chances are that there is something wrong so trust your gut instinct. I've since reported the account and informed others I know. Sad that there are people who try to capitalize on academics, researchers and students hard work.

@Adam cogan

The same thing from the same person was happened with me

I got a paper for review (Gene Technology). A review article without any references and several other huge flaws (bad English, not explaining the tool the review was about). It actually looked like a google translation, and even worse. No author listed (no information weather it was a author-blind review). My review should have made clear that this is not worse publishing ever. I got a revision for review anyway. The authors added two references and changed nothing else. I reported the journal & publisher to Publons, since Publons was accepting my peer review and added it to my dashboard (which record I deleted by now).

Last year I was contacted by this Longdom Publishers (https://www.longdom.com/recycling/contact-us) to take part as invited speaker at the Recycling2020 Conference in Vienna in May 2020. They kept calling me on my mobile to offer discounts for antecipated subscription and I paid them EUR 1061 fee for the subscription including three night accommodation. Because of their insisting I started being suspicious and with recent spread of covid-19 in Europe I decided not attend the event. According to their Terms & Regulations, cancellation 9 weeks before the event should be entitled to 90% refund. I sent them an e-mail within this period cancelling the subscription but so far no reply whatsoever. I´m now worried because I decided to investigate the conference organizers Longdom Publishing and they seem to be in a Dolos List of Predatory publishers and journals.

If anybody has further information regarding Longdom Publishers´ credibility and have been through the same trouble I shall appreciate sharing your experience to recover eventual losses.

Carlos, please tell me you didn’t blindly and willingly pay someone 1061 euro without doing any research if they were legit or not....... If you did then you need to seriously re-evaluate what you do with your money and who you trust.....

I received similar notice from so call Longdom Publishing

Skip it, simply :-)

I sometimes received keynote speaker invitation for a conference in engineering, pharmaceutical sciences, and genetic studies.

BIN IT!

(having said that, I wished we had a way to stop this spamming)

I engaged with Longdom Conferences when they approached me in early 2019, and here is what I found:

• EVERY EVENT is listed AT LEAST TWICE on their website (i.e. same date, same venue, every so slightly different title); this makes them look busy and important.
• After the initial approach by 'Charles' over LinkedIn, all email exchange was done with 'somebody'@gmail.com (NEVER a a good indication of credibility!).
• They asked me to send them my 'electronic signature', so that they could add that to the conference certificate, because I was such 'a highly eminent person in my field of research'; when I refused to hand over my signature, I was offered to just give a presentation.
• In email exchange, they claim to be 'not for profit' (hence the charging of big fees and saying 'no' to asking for travel support even for 'invited key-note speakers'), but their company registration is a 'SA' (i.e. Societe Anonyme = public limited company, registered in Belgium (registration number: 0719323987)). The two shareholders both have (the same) registered addresses in Andhra Pradesh (which seems to be 'CBIT College'), and the Brussels company address provided on their website also houses a gazillion other companies.
• By pure chance, I found that they had added my name and photo to their list of 'Organising Committee Members', without ever asking me, or telling me (or consulting me on anything concerned with the organisation of the conference); I asked them to remove me from that list.

I actually went to their conference, because it was local and cost me all of a metro-ticket, and I found no more than 10 people sitting in a small, dark room; every one I spoke to had been approached as a speaker, and had agreed to attend (because it was local), but had not paid any conference fee.

So, I come back to my opening question: How can we stop this? Do we really have to assume that every speaker invite that does not immediately offer travel expenses / accommodation / waiving of fees in the first approach is illegitimate? Or do we have to engage in an a (predictable) email exchange with a predictable outcome every time to sift the good from the bad?

Did anybody notice that their fab conference website is NOT GDPR compliant, and that their privacy policy is more than incomplete?

At least two Longdom's journals, Journal of Clinical Toxicology and Enzyme Engineering have been mentioned on The New Yorker as "suspicious". Please take a look at an article at https://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/paging-dr-fraud-the-fake-publishers-that-are-ruining-science. The article is about a famous "experiment" on how a fictitious figure, Anna Olga Szust can be offered as an editor on predatory journals.

Wow, thanks everyone so much for the answers. I didn't expect so much engagement! But if there are as many answers here, it means that what they do is so widespread that many of us have been contacted in very questionable and dodgy ways. I also didn't know anything about their journals, thanks for that info as well! After reading all of your statements, I am definitely convinced that they are not trustable and happy I was a little suspicious to not travel to attend these confereces or give them much of my energy or money.

I don't really know how to stop them, but raising awareness about such schemes in posts like this certainly helps! Thanks again everyone and let's spread the word.

PS: I am sorry Carlos for your experience and hope you get your funds back!

Hello everyone: I was contacted in LinkedIn. Initially it seemed to be ok; i asked for more info via email, there I saw some weird thing. I thank you all.

Hy! I was also contact by them even my one research paper is under review. They give me 40 percent discount. But i when i suggest this journal to my friend, he contact California base university Ceo, which help me know that this is a scam. He send me the link of this conversation. I am very thankful to you guyz for giving me alot of information. Please keep sharing your personal experience like this.

Hello! I read about dolos list.

I am in conversation with a member of editor team of "Journal of Remote Sensing and GIS" from Longdom Publisher, requesting to reduce article processing charges (APC) due to some financial crisis and staying in India makes 1425 Euro equal to approximately 1lakh, 19.5 thousands Rupees.

After requesting them twice they have agreed for 200 Euro but still its out of my budget.

My question is are all journals under this Longdom Publisher predator ?

Shall I go for publishing in "journal of remote sensing and GIS" under Longdom Publisher ?

If anyone knows good journal for remote sensing low APC and takes minimum days for publication of research article, Please suggest.

i have also the same question. I visit many journals to publish my paper. The journal which i like the most are present in this list. I go through almost 11 to 12 and all are in this list. Its very confusing now. Can anyone tell about it.

Thanks everyone for your response, really helpful.

I would say how about been contacted to contribute a chapter to an up coming e-book where I have to choose the topic....it beats me. More where I am told I have to make a decision fast and the names of a Noble Laureate is been taunted as one of the editors of the up coming book.

This time, it is Bentham Science Journals and not Longdom.

They are Fraud . A sister company of conferenceseries.com stay away from them by all means. They claim now they are hosting virtual conferences now much easier for them to scam people. Stay safe everyone !

I believe I am their latest victim. I had enrolled in one of their conferences which was meant to take place in late July 2020 in France and I paid 450 £. Sometime after the enrolment and with the pandemic situation exposing around the world and reading stuff about this whole thing being a scam, I required a refund. It took them several weeks to respond, only to say that they will be in touch!! Not surprising that they have now even disabled/removed their email address so there is no way to get in touch.

Shiva Amirkhani

Hi Shiva,

I would encourage you to make a legal claim; there should be something like a a small claims court that covers the legal claims that are relatively small. they are a registered company and it should be possible to take some legal action.

In my posting above, you can find their company registration number; this is all that a legal support needs.

good luck. steffi

Referring to my post from January. Publons answered my email raising concerns about Longdom back in January (sorry for my delayed posting here in Researchgate):

"Thanks for raising this. We currently do not differentiate between predatory journals when it comes to review recognition as we believe there is not yet a comprehensive way to do so. Therefore, we do provide recognition for reviews completed for all journals and publishers. However, we do not partner with journals we suspect as predatory. "

Steffi Friedrichs

Hi Steffi,

Thanks for the information. I am going to discuss the matter with my supervisor. However, I feel the need to make others aware of it. I was wondering if you think raising the issue in platforms like LinkedIn would actually help, as I tend to have way more connections in LinkedIn compared to ResearchGate.

Regards

Shiva Amirkhani

Hi Shiva,

I cannot judge, if LinkedIn is a good platform for such warnings, since I am using it very little and for completely different purposes. But I would think that all visibility of the matter helps. If you can reach more people, go for it.

best wishes,

Steffi

Steffi Friedrichs

Hi Steffi,

Thanks again. I try my best to inform as many people as possible.

twitter?

Shiva Amirkhani & Theresa Pohlkamp

hi - I am a bit of a dinosaur: I never got very active on the social media, so I cannot judge, if Twitter and/or LinkedIn are good platforms, sorry. My Gut feeling would be: Twitter rather than LinkedIn, but the problem is that tweets are very short lived - they can soon not be found anymore (and that's the opposite of what you want to achieve, isn't it?).

Another (maybe additional) action could be to get in touch with those that are writing about predatory conferences (and journals); if you google 'predatory conferences', there are a number of sites and posts (mostly at universities) that mention their experiences and sometimes even add lists. You should definitely try to get Longdom onto such a list, and maybe, whoever runs the list can help further.

Please don't hesitate to contact me, in case this goes nowhere; one last resort could always be that we launch our own list and blog on this (but I would need to look into liability issues before I connect my company to that - meaning: there may be a reason that this is still lacking, and that the odd University site is the only way to write about it).

In any case, there are international organisations here in Brussels, whose role it is to worry about research integrity and academic interest, and they could be good partners in this as well.

PLEASE do let me know, if you think there is a need to be more active and visible in this - nobody can judge that as well as you can, the early-career researchers, who are most vulnerable.

Good Luck & Thank you!

Steffi Friedrichs

Hi again Steffi.

I agree with you, however, I suggested Linkedin as I have more connections from academia in there (many of whom are early career researchers just like myself) compared to for example Researchgate. Twitter can be another option but I am just not really using that besides what you mentioned about it's short term accessibility.

I will be very much to eager to make more people aware of these kind of scam. Even more interesting is that when I was in the process of registration (many months ago) people from this so called conference contacted me on Whatapp (as someone else mentioned we had to enter our telephone number for getting the brochure! Maybe that was enough of a red flag had I been more experienced in the matter) and insisting on enrolling faster. After they removed/disabled their official email address, I contacted this number, and while they initially answered, once they found out the reason for my reaching out, I haven't heard back anything from them in the past two days!

I am very grateful for your kind offer of help and I will be in touch soon.

Best regards,

Shiva

whatever you decide to do, post a link so we can all share.

I posted a tweet. Please RT if you have a twitter account: https://twitter.com/ThePohlkamp/status/1288523062929960960

Theresa Pohlkamp

Hi Theresa,

I took a look at your tweet, thanks for taking an action.

I will let you know once I decided what I need to do next.

I posted this on my LinkedIn as I know a lot of my connections in there are early career researchers just like myself. Hope it helps to stop this scam!

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/shiva-amirkhani-a1bbbb89_is-longdom-conferences-predatory-activity-6696504453375262720-Aj6q

Thank you for sharing this post. I was just contacted by them and have benefited from the above answers

Beware of this publisher. They emailed some editors and sent a proposal to make a collaboration.

They just emailed me about our online journal asking us if we would be interested in “divesting the journal”. They are very bold, I’ll give them that.

I am a "handling editor" of a civil engineering journal Civil Engineering Dimension (

http://cd.petra.ac.id) and received this email recently.

Dear Editor/Publisher,

I am Kristina, representative of LONGDOM PUBLISHING, an eminent publishing company that has been serving the scientific society for more than 3 years. Working hand-in-hand with esteemed professionals in disseminating sources of scientific knowledge to the audience present all around the globe. As an Open Access publisher, we are specialized in publishing journals in the realm of medical, clinical, etc.

While doing research I have found that your journal “Civil Engineering Dimension” has tremendous potential would like to express our gratitude for the efforts you have taken for bolstering the journal which fascinates us to contact you for a proposition for your consideration.

We really wish to add your journal “Civil Engineering Dimension “ in our catalog. I think it will be the best fit for both of us to achieve great results. In this pursuit it would be a great pleasure to talk to you in greater detail, please let me know how your calendar looks for this week. If you are keen on divesting the journal, I would come up with the full particulars of our proposal for the Acquisition. If you’re interested, please let me know your expectation about price.

I'm assuming you're the best person for this - If not, could you please help me by providing the right person (name and email id) whom we can contact?

Looking forward to hearing from you.

Best Regards,

Kristina

Business Development Executive

Email: [email protected]

Benjamin Lumantarna that's the exact same email (word for word) we received and from the same person.

Thank you all for this helpful information

Thank you everyone for sharing, very helpful! Nice 2021 everyone!

Hi everyone,

I decided to provide an update here as I think this may be of help to some of you.

After I found about the predatory nature of this so called conference and finding out the organisers have become totally inaccessible (right after the dates for the conference, any emails sent to their addresses would fail and I received automatic emails saying those email addresses do not exist!). So, in late July 2020, I messaged the person who several months earlier had contacted me on my WhatsApp (!) and encouraged me to sign up for the conference sooner! He/she didn't get back to me properly until this Sunday, 31st of January 2021!! He/she claimed that they no longer work for the Longdom conference and they are happy to help me get my refund. Then asked how much I had paid and offered to contact the program manager! I couldn't bring myself to trust someone who is offering help after this long time so I asked to be directly put in touch with program manager to which they said they can't reveal more information!! Alternatively, they suggested that I contact my bank and ask them to refund the money for me! In the UK this is only possible (if at all) within 120 days of when you made the payment.

I believe this is again part of their plot for exploiting more as another victim of this conference also contacted me a while ago on LinkedIn saying the conference has said they need some money to start the refund process!

I think now that people have been trying to raise awareness over this predatory conference, this is their new way to lessen the damage to their brand (!) otherwise I don't know why it took the person more than 7 months to get back to me. Apologies for the long email.

Regards,

Shiva

Thanks very much for the useful information!

thanks for sharing !!

Well Julio Chiquetto, you made it to number two on the google results list when you google "longdom conference". I guess that speaks for itself regarding the nature of this "invitation".

Thank you Steffi Friedrichs for your detailed answer! You saved me some lifetime.

Bernd Eppinger wow, haha. Interesting!

I guess many of us had some kind of contact with them, but it was somehow confusing or suspicious... and before making any rushed decisions, we'd rather look for reliable information. I actually had no idea it would have so much engagement, thank you everyone for your comments!