Predatory Academic Conference/Journal

This page provides information for researchers to prevent predatory academic conference/Journal before participating in and submitting your paper to the journal.

 

S2 Journal     Scholarly ecosystem Against Fake publishing Environment (SAFE)     THINK-CHECK-ATTEND     THINK-CHECK-SUBMIT

Predatory Conference

The conference was created by researchers to research and further develop their studies in depth, to publicly announce their research achievements and to review and discuss scientific feasibility. On the other hand, fake or predatory conferences are conferences that do not run appropriate peer review and presentation processes for commercial purposes using pure academic interest from researchers who wish to participate in these meetings, or provide exaggerated information. Therefore, please be careful these kind of with the following characteristics so that researchers can conduct sound academic activities.

Characteristics (From 「Avoid Predatory Journals and Questionable Conferences: A resource Guide」)

  • Event is organized by a for-profit entity, rather than a credible scholarly or scientific society or association.
  • Conferences that combine a number of fields topics or disciplines into a single conference. Be particularly wary of alleged conferences that combine multiple, unrelated topics into a single event.
  • The conference uses a free e-mail address, such as a Gmail address.
  • The organizers spam prospective attendees to submit proposals and register. Often, these spam e-mails contain hyperbolic language about how prestigious the conference is.
  • Information about who is organizing the conference is either unclear or nonexistent; or the organizer is not well known or reputable.
  • Acceptances are promised with a very short turnaround time (often less than four weeks).
  • The conference is marketed as a holiday in a desirable location. The event is held at a resort or a popular tourist destination and marketed as a holiday, rather than an academic or scientific event.
  • The conference name bears a striking resemblance to that of a credible or highly prestigious conference, but has subtle minor differences in its name.
  • Organizers guarantee your contribution will be published as an article in the journal associated with the conference. Like the conference, the journal is also predatory and the organizers may later insist on additional article processing charges to publish your article.
  • The conference websites are unstable. They may change URLs or have no record of conferences in previous years.
  • The website text contains poor grammar or numerous spelling errors.
  • Conference fees seem quite high, compared to those run by non-profit scholarly societies or associations.

Experiences of attendees who lured into predatory conferences (From 「Avoid Predatory Journals and Questionable Conferences: A resource Guide」)

  • Upon arriving at the conference venue, attendees reported that the conference has mysteriously been cancelled.
  • There was an event, but it does not resemble a scholarly or scientific conference in the traditional sense. It may be one event, held in a single meeting room of a hotel, rather than spread out over multiple meeting rooms like a large academic conference would be.
  • There may have been very few people in attendance (sometimes fewer than twenty in total).
  • Spouses and children of presenters may have attended sessions in order to make the conference rooms look full.
  • “Conferences” on several different topics or disciplines (sometimes marketed as entirely different conferences) were held in the same room, with presenters being the only ones in the room. The other attendees had little to no interest in others’ presentations because they were lured in to present on a completely different topic.
  • Attendees were promoted to keynote speakers or session chairs. Subsequently, their names and photos were used without permission on the event organizers for any number of their events.
  • Some attendees have felt regret or embarrassment after attending a predatory conference, recognizing that attending a predatory conference may not have helped their reputation.

Useful Websites/Guides to know

  • Prevention guide of predatory academic activity (Provided by National Research Foundation of Korea) PDF FILE
  • Avoid Predatory Journals and Questionable Conferences: A resource Guide PDF FILE

Related News

  • A Peek Inside the Strange World of Fake Academia (2016.12.29 The New York Times) LINK
  • Hundreds of scientists have peer-reviewed for predatory journals (2020.03.11 Nature News) LINK
  • Inside a “Fake” Conference: A Journey Into Predatory Science (2019.07.11 Technology Network) LINK

Predatory Journal

Academic journals are magazines that publish papers professionally written by researchers on each field of their own, and they are also recognized for their achievements by publishing and sharing their research achievements. A sound academic journal is an academic journal that reviews according to procedures and methods that can be recognized by the relevant academic community. Poor journals are journals that exploit these researchers’ pure academic interest or expectations of merit recognition to confuse authors with false peer review processes, fake impact factors, unreliable editors, and similar false journal names. Therefore, please be careful of the academic journals with the following characteristics so that researchers can conduct sound academic activities.

Types (From Guide for Preventions of Poor Academic Activities)

Type Definition Details
Hijacked Journal Journals that mislead researchers by using names that are similar to famous, prestigious journals. They actively request researchers’ work, suggesting that publication and research presentation can be easily made. This aggravates our research environment by stealing researchers’ work and blocking submissions to other journals.
Predatory Journal Journals that accepts all kinds of academic papers, as long as they receive money. They cause confusion to researchers by circulating “Call for papers” emails and creating fake publication website that are similar to famous international journal websites. These fake websites are not only temporarily maintained and disappeared, they also send emails to professors and researchers saying that their works are accepted. People who receive such emails registered their research performance to the department of research performance management, but they had to make a cancellation later. Please be careful of fake websites. They usually appear first when searching journal titles on Google.
Mass Publication Journals Academic Journals that receives and publishes papers in mass quantities in a single issue, just because they are listed in Scopus or SCI. They are listed in internationally renowned DB(SCI, SCOPUS) and encourage researchers to submit their papers by publishing large numbers of papers in an issue. Most of the papers are published through simplified peer review. However, only some of the articles are selected with high academic value in order to increase citation index.

Characteristics (From 「Avoid Predatory Journals and Questionable Conferences: A resource Guide」)

  • Are not linked to or run by a credible scholarly, academic or technical society or association, though some pretend to be.
  • Do not receive public (e.g. government) funds or grants.
  • Send spam e-mails.
  • Brag about the high quality of the journal, which can include false claims about journal metrics and where it is indexed.
  • Features an editor-in-chief who also edits numerous other journals, from a variety of different disciplines.
  • Make false claims about where the journal is indexed (e.g. PUBMED).
  • Promise fast publication.
  • Promise an easy peer-review and process.
  • Have titles very close to those of highly respected legitimate journals, with only subtle modifications.
  • May include the words, “International”, “World”, “Global” or “Universal” in the title.
  • Claim to be based in major cities (e.g. London or New York), when they are really published somewhere else.
  • Make it difficult to find out who manages the journal.

Useful Websites/Guides to know

  • Prevention guide of predatory academic activity (Provided by National Research Foundation of Korea) LINK
  • Avoid Predatory Journals and Questionable Conferences: A resource Guide PDF FILE

Check list 1 : Conference Checker

  • Are you aware of the society or the association organizing this conference?
  • Can you easily identify the venue of the conference?
  • Is it clear what fees will be charged (conference fee, registration fees, etc.) and would these be waived if you are accepted as a speaker?
  • Are any of the sponsors involved in the conference? Are you aware of any of them?
  • Did you check the conference website? Is all the information (such as the attendance fees, submission date, conference date, editorial committee, program details, venue) presented in a proper way?
  • Is there a clear information about the timeline and the agenda for the conference?
  • Have you read any papers from this conference proceedings before?
  • Is the Editorial Committee listed on the website? Have you heard of the Editorial Committee members before?
  • Do the scope and objectives of the conference fit your field and core interest or not?
  • Is the Committee clear about the editorial control over presentations and the type of peer-review it uses?

Check list 2 : Details

  • Organizers & Sponsors
    • Are you aware of the society or the association organizing this conference?
    • Can you easily identify the venue of the conference?
    • Is it the first time that this conference is being held?
    • Have you or your colleagues attended this conference before?
    • Is it clear what fees will be charged (conference fee, registration fees, …, etc.) and would these be waived if you are accepted as a speaker?
    • Are any of the sponsors involved in the conference?
    • Are you aware of any of them, especially with industry-related fields such as Engineering & Biomedical research?
    • Did you check the conference website? Is all the information (such as the attendance fees, submission date, conference date, editorial committee, program details and venue) presented in a proper way?
    • Have you read any papers from this conference proceedings before?
  • Agenda & Editorial Committee
    • Is there a clear information about the timeline and the agenda for the conference?
    • Do the scope and objectives of the conference fit your field and core interest or not?
    • Have you heard of the Keynote speakers?
    • Is the Editorial Committee listed on the website?
    • Have you heard of the Editorial Committee members before?
    • Is the Committee clear about the editorial control over presentations and the type of peer-review it uses?
  • Conference Proceedings
    • Is the Organizing Committee clear about where the proceedings will be published?
    • Does the conference make it clear which indexing services it can guarantee the published proceedings and to which indexers will it submit the proceedings for evaluation?
    • Is the publisher of the proceedings a member of a recognized industry initiative such as COPE, DOAJ, OASPA?

 

※ For details please visit thinkcheckattend page (LINK)

Check list

  • Do you or your colleagues know the journal?
  • Have you read any articles in the journal before?
  • Is it easy to discover the latest papers in the journal?
  • Can you easily identify and contact the publisher?
  • Is the publisher name clearly displayed on the journal website?
  • Can you contact the publisher by telephone, email, and post?
  • Is the journal clear about the type of peer review it uses?
  • Are articles indexed in services that you use?
  • Is it clear what fees will be charged?
  • Does the journal site explain what these fees are for and when they will be charged?
  • Do you recognize the editorial board?
  • Have you heard of the editorial board members?
  • Do the editorial board mention the journal on their own websites?
  • Is the publisher a member of a recognized industry initiative?
  • Do they belong to the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) ?
  • If the journal is open access, is it listed in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) ?
  • If the journal is open access, does the publisher belong to the Open Access Scholarly Publishers’ Association (OASPA) ?
  • Is the journal hosted on one of INASP’s Journals Online platforms (for journals published in Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Central America and Mongolia) or on African Journals Online (AJOL, for African journals)?
  • Is the publisher a member of another trade association?

※ For details please visit thinkchecksubmit page (LINK)

Scholarly ecosystem Against Fake publishing Environment(SAFE): https://safe.koar.kr/

  • A site operated and supported by KISTI to secure researchers’ valuable research achievements, create a transparent research culture, and conduct sound academic publishing activities by sharing suspected features, relevant lists, guidelines, and share relevant information with domestic researchers.
  • Discussion Board for Academic Dishonesty (LINK)
    • Please share various opinions, such as suspect journals and conferences, through ‘Newsgroup’ from that site.

Contact Information