JUNK CONFERENCE WARNING
In modern science, as any field matures it becomes a target of predatory journals, publishers§, and meeting organisers: quantum technology is no exception unfortunately! For those interested in the whys and wherefores, see the New York Times, A Peek Inside the Strange World of Fake Academia, or the HuffPost, Predatory Conferences Undermine Science And Scam Academics.
§ Another good resource is the resurrected Beall's list of predatory journals and publishers
Regular readers of this page have reported some of the following conferences as junk conferences, based on attending and/or presenting at earlier incarnations of them; the others have the classic hallmarks of a predatory publisher and/or conference organiser.
- BIT Congress. Avoid these conferences
"...is part of a wave of organizations that have appeared in China in past several years noted for arranging congresses with little academic merit and with the primary aim of generating revenue rather than scientific knowledge sharing." - Creative Conferences. Avoid these conferences
- Daakview. Avoid these conferences
- Inase. Avoid these conferences and seminars
- Meetings21. Avoid these conferences
- OMICS. Avoid these conferences
"...started publishing its first journal in 2008. By 2015, it claimed over 700 journals, although about half of them were defunct". They run conferences that rarely—if ever!— have organisers from the field, or indeed reputable speakers. Note the URL for these conferences can be either omicsonline.org or conferenceseries.com . UPDATE: OMICS has been fined $50M for deceptive practices - Phronesis. Avoid these conferences
- Synergia Summits. Avoid these conferences
- waset. Avoid these conferences
...are a known predatory publisher, run by a former science teacher in Turkey (and his family). Readers have complained to this site about their fraudulent behaviour, for example:I would also like to alert you that this particular organization has been using my name as their conference committee member. I am not involved at all with this organization and their conferences and have not consented for my name to be used. My university legal office has been informed and is looking into the matter. I hope you will inform your colleagues if they happen to associate me with these conferences."—Kim Guan Saw, 2 April 2015
See the comments at the end of this post for other experiences; or this warning. Comments from the former include:
In 2012 I organised an international conference ... our list of working group titles has just been copied and pasted for a WASET conference (15–16 May 2013)
The conference is a complete scam. I know I have been on several hiring committees and if we see someone list a paper published at WASET on their CV we immediately stop evaluating their application.
I went to a WASET conference and it was a complete joke. There were virtually no people there in my field, and the talks were completely unrelated to each other. Basically each person got up and spoke about their work to a completely unrelated audience. For example, the person before me talked about boat design, I talked about quantum mechanics, and the person after talked about Halal meat!
Defunct junk conferences
I look forward to the day where all the organisers above are moved down to this list. In the meantime, fewer parasites is always a good thing!
- EMN. Social media lit up with colleagues complaining about spam from an organisation called EMN Meetings—mostly on private pages, but here are representative public postings by Jacob Biamonte and Heino Falke. From their website it looks like they've shut down. Result!
- Oscine were a newer entrant on this list, with the classic hallmarks of a predatory publisher and conference organiser. From their website,it looks like they've shut down. Whew!
- Scientific Federation had the classic hallmarks of a predatory publisher and conference organiser. From their website,it looks like they've shut down. Yay!