Conference Accreditation and Need of a Bibliometric Measure to Distinguish Predatory Conferences

Abstract

Academic conferences offer scientists the opportunity to share their findings and knowledge with other researchers. However, the number of conferences is rapidly increasing globally and many unsolicited e-mails are received from conference organizers. These e-mails take time for researchers to read and ascertain their legitimacy. Because not every conference is of high quality, there is a need for young researchers and scholars to recognize the so-called “predatory conferences” which make a profit from unsuspecting researchers without the core purpose of advancing science or collaboration. Unlike journals that possess accreditation indices, there is no appropriate accreditation for international conferences. Here, a bibliometric measure is proposed that enables scholars to evaluate conference quality before attending.

Predatory conferences: a systematic scoping review

“…Most (n=17) of the included papers were published between 2017 and 2021. The corresponding authors were from 12 different countries, where one-fourth were affiliated to the USA,24–28 followed by India,29–31 Denmark,32 33 Hungary,34 35 Saudi Arabia,36 Iran,37 UK,38 Australia,39 Switzerland,40 Canada,41 Hong Kong42 and the Czech Republic 43. PC attract multidisciplinary attention.…”

“…Eleven studies collected empirical data,25 26 28 34–36 38 40–43 where one half used a quantitative approach, one qualitative. Nine papers were theoretical,24 27 29–33 37 39 All papers were peer reviewed.…”

“…Peer review was often missing 25 27 29 32 33 37 38 42 ; the academic subject matter of the PC had a wide and multidisciplinary scope 27 29 32 36-38 42 , ; and the conference was organised for profit with little concern about scientific value. 29 34 39 41 43 RQ2: reasons for participating in PC All 20 papers [24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41][42][43] explicitly or implicitly suggested possible reasons for participating in PC (table 4). We identified reasons for this as relating to the overall context of the academic work, the nature of PC, and the personal characteristics of researchers.…”

“…Makvandi et al, 2021 40 Organizers who "exploit the need for researchers to publish papers in proceedings or affiliated journals by asking for a significant conference attendance charge, using low quality conference business models"…”

Plagiarism through Paraphrasing Tools—The Story of One Plagiarized Text

“…The lack of quality in peer reviewing is an indicator of the predatory behavior of some publishers or conference organizers [42][43][44]. Makvandi et al [45] suggested establishing a system for evaluating the quality of scientific conferences. Like scientific journals, it is difficult to cover every global scientific conference with an appropriate evaluation system.…”