Dear Ken,
Thank you very much for the quick response, earlier last week I was looking
through the ICPDPDP and suspected there was something weird so I raised it. We
should definitely condemn this phenomenon.
Regards,
*Alon Weiss* *Ph.D.*
*Multidisciplinary Product Designer, Educator & Researcher*
*M: 972 (0) 50 8258206 <+972%2052-263-0129> | www.be-weiss.com
<http://www.be-weiss.com/>*
https://www.linkedin.com/in/alon-weiss/
On Sun, Feb 7, 2021 at 6:26 AM Ken Friedman <
[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Dear Alon (and All),
>
> The conference you’re asking about — ICPDPDP 2021: 15. International
> Conference on Product Development Process and Design Paradigms — has all
> the earmarks of a predatory conference organiser without scientific or
> academic merit. I am responding to your information request under a general
> header because this phenomenon is large, general, and widespread.
>
> You can recognise these kinds of conference organisers quite easily. If
> you spend half an hour on their web site, all will be clear.
>
> The organisation responsible for this conference has a pompous,
> nonsensical name: The World Academy of Science, Engineering and Technology.
> If you do a quick web search, you’ll find a good Wikipedia article with
> basic facts.
>
> The web site of this World Academy shows that they organise conference and
> journals on far too broad a range of topics to be meaningful. No legitimate
> conference organisation organises separate conferences in a dozen different
> science and technology fields along with conferences in the humanities and
> social sciences as well as conferences in sports medicine, nursing,
> political science, law, and business studies.
>
> Their site advertises hundreds of conferences and publications. At the
> same time that they seek fee-paying participants, they also invite people
> to apply for official positions and reviewing assignments. Any legitimate
> conference would have these roles filled in advance. They also seek
> sponsors.
>
> Their proceedings are supposedly indexed, but the indexes are not serious
> scientific and scholarly indexes comparable to Scopus, Web of Knowledge, or
> other indexes. They are general information sources such as Google Scholar
> or Semantic Scholar. These are search engine applications, not indexes.
>
> The web site also claims that selected conference papers will be published
> in special journal issues. If you examine the journals, you will find that
> all these journals are published by the conference organiser. They
> reproduce conference papers in issues of their own predatory pay-to-publish
> journals.
>
> The lists of advisors and scholars on the scientific committee is
> puzzling. While some of the people are real, many predatory conference
> organisations harvest the names and images of real people from the web,
> using them without permission. They also invite people to apply for
> membership on the international scientific committee.
>
> Many fields now struggle with this problem of fake conferences and
> predatory publishing. These are two sides of the same counterfeit coin.
>
> Increased pressure to demonstrate research capacity and research
> achievements led to an explosion of these problems. Fake conferences and
> fake open access journals are the most visible because these permit the
> greatest profit for the least investment and effort. Since academic staff
> members and researchers in all university fields face the same challenges,
> all fields struggle with this problem.
>
> Putting it another way, the problem is that many people are attempting to
> represent that they do research without respect to the actual quality or
> meaning of their work.
>
> Jeffrey Beall's list of predatory open access publishing firms and
> journals was an excellent guide to sorting through the swamp of fake
> journals. Now that Prof. Beall no longer maintains the list, it is more
> important than ever for researchers to learn how to discern good venues.
>
> There has never been a similar list for conferences.
>
> The for-profit conference industry first came to my attention in the
> mid-1990s when a serious and highly respected engineer and scientist in the
> former Yugoslavia became tired of living on an academic salary. The market
> economy in the former eastern Europe began to explode and this professor
> had organised several serious conferences as a real academic. Sensing a
> market opportunity, he went into the conference business as a freelance
> conference organiser.
>
> At one point, he was organising two dozen conferences a year in exotic or
> highly desirable vacation locations. Some conferences focused on specific
> themes. Others offered a wacky and implausibly broad range of themes. At
> the time, a back-of-the-envelope estimate suggested that he was making USD
> $3,000,000 to USD $5,000,000 net profit every year. At that time, he was
> limited by the fact that he organised physical conferences in real
> locations, so there was a link between his fraudulent conferences and the
> very real vacation opportunities at the conference sites. In today’s world,
> predatory conference organisations have discovered that there is no need
> for people to attend the conferences — they simply want to earn credentials
> and certificates for presenting and publishing. As a result, these ventures
> are far more profitable.
>
> In 2013, an article in The New York Times discussed the problem.
>
>
> http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/08/health/for-scientists-an-exploding-world-of-pseudo-academia.html
>
> My advice with respect to conferences is only to participate in serious
> events sponsored by a university or by a respected discipline association
> specifically known to you. If you don’t know the association sponsoring a
> conference, it is probably not well enough known in your field to attract
> the audience of listeners whom you want your paper to reach.
>
> These people don’t seem to rent space in universities, but some predatory
> conference organisers do. It is important to distinguish between a
> university as the sponsor and host of a conference in contrast with a
> university as a rented site. Some conference organizers now rent space at
> universities in down-time — they advertise the conference as a conference
> *at* the university rather than a conference sponsored *by* the university.
> It is wise to check closely. If you are not sure, ask someone designated as
> an associate dean for research or research director at your university.
>
> Every serious research field has plenty of room for papers at legitimate
> conferences. With as many real conferences as we have in the design field,
> there is no need to pay for acceptance at a fake conference.
>
> We should only support not-for-profit conferences sponsored by learned
> societies, professional organisations, and universities. There is no value
> in attending profit-making conferences hosted by profit-making conference
> organisations that exist to earn money from researchers and scholars too
> new in the research field to recognise the differences among kinds of
> conferences.
>
> The problem of for-profit conferences will continue to grow until
> universities and national research assessment agencies begin to address
> this. The large number of fake conferences will only begin to shrink when
> researchers no longer receive credit for taking part in these events.
>
> Doctoral programs should warn research students about these problems as
> part of their education. Profit-making ventures with no connection to
> learned societies, professional organisations, or universities do not serve
> the field.
>
> Doctoral programs and research groups should protect research students and
> inexperienced researchers from predatory conference organisers. These waste
> valuable resources without improving research or advancing research
> careers.
>
> Yours,
>
> Ken
>
> Ken Friedman, Ph.D., D.Sc. (hc), FDRS | Editor-in-Chief | 设计 She Ji. The
> Journal of Design, Economics, and Innovation | Published by Tongji
> University in Cooperation with Elsevier | URL:
> http://www.journals.elsevier.com/she-ji-the-journal-of-design-economics-and-innovation/
>
> Chair Professor of Design Innovation Studies | College of Design and
> Innovation | Tongji University | Shanghai, China ||| Visiting Professor |
> Faculty of Engineering | Lund University ||| Email
> [log in to unmask] | Academia
> https://tongji.academia.edu/KenFriedman | D&I http://tjdi.tongji.edu.cn
>
> --
>
>
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