Connectionists: 3490 fake conferences organized by WASET

[Lee Giles]

Hi:

WASET runs quite a few conferences. Their committee for so many conferences
is quite small.

> http://www.waset.org/committees.php


These conferences appear to function as publication machines, primarily
for authors from institutions far from the mainstream. You pay a fee and
you get your paper(s) published.

>From their website, some of these conference publications seem to become
journal papers.
This makes their publication model very confusing.

There seems to be little or no reviewing and there have been cases of
plagiarism.

On the positive, all papers are free and readily accessed by the public.

Best,

Lee Giles


On 9/16/12 8:09 AM, Wlodzislaw Duch wrote:
> Dear Colleagues,
>
>  
>
> checking the web address for the next ICANN 2013 International Conference on
> Artificial Neural Networks (which is run by the European Neural Networks
> Society every year) we have found the following WASET conference site:
>
> http://www.waset.org/conferences/2013/amsterdam/icann/
>
>  
>
> Identical name, but no logo of ENNS, no chairman, it claims to be 34th
> ICANN, but actually we had so far only 22 conferences in this series, and
> the 2013 will be in Sophia in September (see http://www.e-nns.org), not in
> May in Amsterdam.  The name has been hijacked and I doubt that such
> conference will ever take place.
>
>  
>
> Investigating further we have found that the conference has no chairman, and
> is run by unknown people, with few exceptions of people who may not even
> know that they are in the committee or may have carelessly accepted an
> invitation. And then looking at the list of conferences we have found that
> there are 3490 conferences allegedly organized by WASET! Some of them I
> could easily identify as well-known conferences that got also high numbers
> in front to make you think that they have been organized many times.
>
> Some of them are in Singapore. A search in the internet shows that many
> people already lost 450 Euro paying conference fees. See the story
>
> https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!topic/i_love_taiwan/TFx1WwltKl
> Q
>
>  
>
> The whole scam seems to be connected to Azerbaijan, where WASET is
> registered, and it seems to be run by Turkish people.
>
> Incidentally Wikipedia redirects WASET to Thebes, ancient city in Egypt. As
> this information is not yet easily found in the Internet please warn your
> friends not to fall in this trap, as well as do not accept to be a member of
> such conferences. Please tell me if you know about some international police
> efforts to follow such scams, perhaps there is a way to block their site.
>
>  
>
> Regards,
>
> Wlodek Duch 
>
> ______________
>
>  <http://www.google.com/search?q=W.+Duch> Google: W. Duch 
>
>  
>
>  
>
>