Suspicious and Possibly Bogus Academic Conferences and Publications
Updated April 2016
Over the past ten years or so I've noticed an
ever-increasing number of "Calls for Papers" from organizations I've
never heard of, holding conferences in high-demand tourist destinations like
Las Vegas, Hawai'i, Barcelona, and Athens. While some of these conferences may
be kosher, many are clearly being organized for nothing more than profit. The
goal is to entice scholars to travel to these conferences on their university's
budget. The conference organizers make money from accommodation and conference
registration fees.
A similar phenomenon is occurring with journals. Several are popping up that ask scholars to submit papers, but then charge the scholars "revision fees" for unnecessary changes to the papers. The scholars then pass these fees on to their institutions. These journals make their profit from such revision fees and from library subscriptions to their journals. Again, several journals may be genuine, but many have clearly been founded simply to bilk academic institutions out of money.
The modus operandi seems to be eerily similar, suggesting that many of these "conferences" are being organized by the same people. A blanket email, opening with a CFP ("Call for Papers"), goes out to thousands of academic email addresses. This call is followed by a description of the city in which the conference is to be held, extolling its attractions and climate. The next paragraph suggests that you can give your paper "virtually" (i.e. not deliver it in person) or/and submit your paper to the conference organizer's journal, which is "fully refereed" (or some similar formula). The next paragraph lists several scholars, usually with well-known academic affiliations, who will be delivering papers at the conference. A "professor of [something]" signs the letter, giving his address as "The University of X".
Some cursory digging often finds that the sender of the email is, in fact, not at "The University of X" at all, or is merely a student there. Sometimes he is dead or retired. The scholars from the prominent institutions turn out to be graduate students, or non-existent.
The invitation usually originates in a commercial email address, and the conference websites are also usually commercial (.com). Several .org sites are now involved.
A similar phenomenon is occurring with journals. Several are popping up that ask scholars to submit papers, but then charge the scholars "revision fees" for unnecessary changes to the papers. The scholars then pass these fees on to their institutions. These journals make their profit from such revision fees and from library subscriptions to their journals. Again, several journals may be genuine, but many have clearly been founded simply to bilk academic institutions out of money.
The modus operandi seems to be eerily similar, suggesting that many of these "conferences" are being organized by the same people. A blanket email, opening with a CFP ("Call for Papers"), goes out to thousands of academic email addresses. This call is followed by a description of the city in which the conference is to be held, extolling its attractions and climate. The next paragraph suggests that you can give your paper "virtually" (i.e. not deliver it in person) or/and submit your paper to the conference organizer's journal, which is "fully refereed" (or some similar formula). The next paragraph lists several scholars, usually with well-known academic affiliations, who will be delivering papers at the conference. A "professor of [something]" signs the letter, giving his address as "The University of X".
Some cursory digging often finds that the sender of the email is, in fact, not at "The University of X" at all, or is merely a student there. Sometimes he is dead or retired. The scholars from the prominent institutions turn out to be graduate students, or non-existent.
The invitation usually originates in a commercial email address, and the conference websites are also usually commercial (.com). Several .org sites are now involved.
The worst CFPs often contain grammatical or spelling errors.
Many of these "conferences" are held outside the
United States, probably to avoid legal problems.
Although a small number of these conferences are actually
held at universities, it often transpires that the universities have simply
rented out the conference space and have no other connection with these events.
Suspicious Conferences
- The World Universities Forum - Rhodes, Greece:
http://www.UniversitiesForum.com
- NEW DIRECTIONS IN THE HUMANITIES - Montréal, Canada: http://thehumanities.com (this is a
sophisticated operation, run by the publisher Common Ground out of
Champaign-Urbana, IL. The conference appears to be entirely for profit.
Common Ground publishes several score journals, all apparently for profit.
Authors pay to publish, and users pay for access).
- CONFERENCE ON INTERDISCIPLINARY SOCIAL SCIENCES -
Barcelona, Spain: http://www.SocialSciencesConference.com
- International Global combine Conference on Global Economy
and Human Welfare
- International Cardiology Congress - www.internationalcardiologycongress.com
- ANNA WORLD '11 -
The 2011 World Congress & Expo
- CITE 2008
- VIDEA
- Institute of Advanced Scientific Researches
- World Congress on Electronics and Electrical Engineering
(WCEEENG)
- EEEIC Conference (http://eeeic.eu)
- Anything organized by BIT Life Sciences (www.bitlifesciences.com/)
- [Xth] Global Studies Conference (2012 in Moscow)
- The Conference on Books and Publishing (http://booksandpublishing.com/the-conference)
- Annual International Conference on Sociology, Athens,
Greece.
- All conferences organized by ATINER (The Athens
Institute for Education and Research). This outfit gets unsuspecting
academics to head up "research units" (which have no physical
existence) and thus lend credibility to the conferences.
- IOSSBR (International
Organization of Social Sciences and Behavioral Research). Supposedly
operating out of a P.O. Box in Gulfport, MS, but probably a virtual
operation. A slick website at iossbr.com, but notice that there are no
names attached to the organization. The one name attached to the journal
is "Dr. Zack Jourdan." This is presumably the same Zack Jourdan
who has previously claimed to be an associate professor at Auburn
University (but there appears to be no record of him in such a position).
Also presumably the same person as "Stephen Zachariah Jourdan"
who graduated Ph.D. from Auburn in 2010.
I deem the
above conferences "suspicious" because they appear not to be
organized by any acknowledged academic or learned society, and because they
appear to have exorbitant registration fees.
Conferences
of Marginal or No Value
- Anything organized by Hawaii University International
Conferences (www.huichawaii.org)
[note: there is no Hawaii University; these conferences are organized by a
minor entrepreneur named Dhevan Keith, who is also involved in web
development and property speculation]
- Education And STEM Conference, Hawaii
- Hawaii International Conference on Arts and Humanities (www.hichumanities.org)
- Hawaii International Conference on Social Sciences (www.hicsocial.org)
- Hawaii International Conference on Education (www.hiceducation.org)
- Hawaii International Conference on Business (www.hicbusiness.org)
- [note that the foregoing conferences are organized by persons
styling themselves variously "Joelle Lee", "Joelle
Vega" or "Sara Jane Arellano"; all three conferences are
associated with the company "Hawaii International Conferences",
which may be owned by a "Eugene Villaluz" or/and by a
"Darren Garvey". In 2015 the "Call for Papers" is
coming from a "Jessica Nam" and the conference address is a P.O.
Box.
- Annual International Conference on Literature,
Languages & Linguistics, Athens, Greece
- ICEME2014 (ICME) International Conference on Economics
and Management Engineering, Hangzhou, China (WWW.ICEME2014.ORG; ICEME2014@163.COM)
[I deem these conferences to be of little
value because they are neither organised nor hosted by any recognized scholarly
body; nor do their organizers have any physical address.)
Suspicious
Journals
- The
Proceedings of any of the above-mentioned "Hawaii Conferences on . .
." (which are simply unedited online cut-and-pastes converted to pdf)
- Anything
involving the "Center for Promoting Ideas USA" (CPI), now
including the American International
Journal of Social Science (AIJSS), the International Journal of Business and Social Science (IJBSS), the International
Journal of Humanities and Social Science (IJHSS), the International Journal of Applied
Science and Technology (IJAST), the American International Journal of Contemporary Research (AIJCR),
and the International Journal of Business, Humanities and Technology
(IJBHT).
- Anything involving
"Scientific Research Publishing" (SCIRP; scirp.org).
Unfortunately, this outfit now publishes over a hundred journals. Most or
all of these journals first began publication in 2011. The latest from
them is a Call for Papers for the "journal" Advances in Literary Study. Their email address has shifted to
spuu.org, which is registered to either "kong ruoshan" or "wuhongzheng"
(one word) in China. As of June 2013 they are now emailing from
als@charitylight.org. The domain is registered to a Xiaolun Yang in
Beijing, China (yangxiaolun321@gmail.com).
As of January 2014 they are emailing from als@tiancong.info, under the name
"Jessy Zhang".
- Global
Studies Journal
- History
Research ("David Publishing Company") - history@davidpublishing.org;
history_research@yahoo.com
- Institute of
Advanced Scientific Researches
- International
Journal of Arts and Commerce (IJAC) and anything from the "Center for
Enhancing Knowledge UK" (cekinfo.org.uk), which operates out of a
discount fashion shop in Birmingham called Saajan. They also use the site
ijac.org.uk.
- International
Journal of Finance & Banking (IJFB): journaloffinance.net
- International
Journal of the Humanities
- International
Journal of Interdisciplinary Social Sciences
- International
Journal of Business and Social Research (IJBSR). - http://www.ijbsr.org
- International
Journal of Business and Social Science (IJBSS) - jbssnet.com
- International
Journal of Business, Humanities and Technology -ijbhtnet.com
- International
Journal of Liberal Arts and Social Science (ijlass.org)
- Journal of
Arts and Humanities (JAH); see MIR/MIREDU below
- Journal of
Computer Science and Engineering
- Journal of
Literature and Art Studies ("Co-editing with The Center of Chinese
Literary Anthropology at SJTU"). The poorly-written email from this
"journal" came from davidpublishing.org, a publisher well-known
for predatory practices. See more on them here.
- Anything
involving the Maryland Institute of Research (MIR; MIREDU) www.miredu.org
(they also call themselves MIR Center for Socio-Economic Research,
Maryland, USA)
- The
International Journal of Economics and any publications associated with
the Maryland Institute of Research (MIR or Miredu) (2014:
mirpublishing.com). This journal has of 2015 jumped ship to the “Library
of Academic Resources”, supposedly based in Toronto, Canada. They are NOT
listed as a tenant at the address they give (http://www.439university.com/tenantdirectory.php).
See below for more on CLAR/LAR.
- Proceedings
of the Hawaii International Conference on Arts and Humanities
- Publications
from ATINER (Athens Institute for Education and Research). This is the
brainchild of one or several Greek scholars living abroad, but seems to
exist solely for its expensive conferences in Athens and its
pay-to-publish proceedings and journals.
- The Review of
Social Sciences and anything from the LAR Centre Press, trading out of Beaverton,
Oregon. This outfit was originally known as CLAR: the Canadian Library of
Academic Resources.
- Advances in
Literary Study (SCIRP )
- Anything
published by or associated with scirp.org ("Scientific Research
Publishing, Inc.")
- Anything
published by Common Ground, Champaign, IL.
- Open Journal
of Modern Linguistics (OJML) [SCIRP]. Their emails are supposedly coming
from caollf.com. They give an address in Hubei, China and a P.O. Box in
Irvine, California.
- Anything from
Sciedu Press (sciedu.ca)
- Journal of Social Sciences Research (associated with the IOSSBR above).
Miscellaneous
Grant Writing Workshops
One of the latest approaches is the "Grant
Writing Workshop". An individual or organization rents a room at a
big-name local university and offers a "Grant Writing Workshop at XXX
University," which they advertise to the faculty at all the local
universities, particularly the mid-level ones. The workshop looks prestigious
and the local universities will pay the exorbitant registration fees, which the
individual or organization then pockets. The workshop may or may not be
worthless. Certainly the facilitators can know nothing more about grant writing
than the attendees unless they have worked for grant-bestowing organizations.
The latest outfit to canvass me is fundingsolutions4u.com AKA
granttrainingcenter.com.
This is only a list of publications that have crossed
my radar. A very comprehensive (and up to date) list can be found here: http://scholarlyoa.com/
Kudos to Jeffrey Beall for his work in uncovering
questionable academic publications.
Labels: academic, conferences, journals, predatory, publications, suspicious
posted by sacsanua @ 6:54 AM
3 Comments:
Thanks for sharing this wonderful blog with us. Nice post with great information and it is indeed informative and useful. There are a lots of website for International Journal of Applied Science, like – ijraset.com,ijaetmas.com, oraljournal.com and many more. But I like your blog
Thank you for affirming what I already thought of IOSSBR. They now have my money. I sent in an abstract. Received no notice of confirmation and my money is already gone.
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