Nature of 18 July 2024 ran a story about predatory conferences, with an actual reporter on the ground! More precisely in the vicinity of Heathrow where they interviewed victims of this scam. Which reminded me of earlier instances, like when I had to explain the concept of a predatory conference to a Master student who was so excited to be invited to a conference. Or when I almost went to a Montparnasse hotel in Paris to check on the actual audience of a superposition of OMICS conferences on every imaginable topic, all happening together in the same room of that hotel. Which is exactly the situation reported in that article… A scary figure inside is that these predatory conferences are becoming “now more plentiful than legitimate ones”. Although this does not mean more people attend fake conferences than legit ones (Nature advances the figure of 10% researchers attending these pseudo-conferences.). The journal also address the elephant in the room, namely as to why people attend such conferences. Very junior researchers may get confused if this is their first invitation, but then why don’t they get a proper warning from their funding bodies or their senior colleagues?! And there is the acknowledgement that some researchers do attend fake conferences in full knowledge of the scam.
“They might be flattered to be invited or attracted by a glamorous location; questionable conferences often take place in tourist hotspots. Or they might attend simply to add a line to their CV.”
The examples chosen by Nature are obviously predatory in that they are run by an only-for-profit company, without a scientific board or society at the helm, and cramming talks about unrelated topics in a single hotel conference room (or online). One could think of extending the definition, though, to conferences without a clear scientific purpose, witness a yearly series I can think of (!) merging statistics and econometrics sub-conferences without an active scientific board, each session being the responsibility of its organiser. The one occasion I attended, both the sessions I talked in and I organised were only attended by the speakers…
