(Photo: Stan van Pelt)
Random subjects, bad presentations – copycat conferences are the latest way in which rogue companies try to get money from academics. Like this one in Budapest where several Dutch researchers gave presentations. “This was a one-time thing, never again.”
This article in 1 minute
“At the very least you can say that you attended a strange presentation about mobile telephones in buses.” Rand Raheem, a researcher at the University of Middlesex (England), tries to laugh off her discomfort when she closes her presentation. She just spent 20 minutes talking about the problems of unstable internet access in fast moving forms of transport such as trains and buses, and what kinds of technical solutions may help.
Fake congress
This may sound like a very ordinary subject at an academic conference were it not for the fact that Raheem was giving a presentation at a specialised conference about neuroscience – NeuroTalk Budapest. She is not the only odd one out in the session entitled ‘Recent fundamental research in neurosciences’. The next presentation was about the role of osteoporosis in relation to dental treatment. And the presentations in this afternoon’s sessions, that may be somewhat related to neurosciences, are not even related to each other. They range from how connecting words are important to understand sentences to electrically stimulating spinal nerves to help vertebrae recovery.
It is like buying a pair of fake Nikes without realising it
This diversity is not the norm in sessions at this type of conference. They are usually connected in terms of subject matter so that professionals in the field can get together, talk and share information about their areas of expertise. Conferences are invaluable for academics as a place to network, draw attention to your research, and get new ideas for your research.
So what is going on here in Budapest? Neurotalk2024Europe – the event’s official title – is a so-called predatory conference. In Dutch, the terms parasitair congres (parasitic congress) or namaakconferentie (fake conference) are the closest terms. It is like buying a pair of fake Nikes without realising it. From a distance they look like the real thing, but if you look closely you will see that they are a poor quality copy.
Cashcow
The conferences are a conference version of the more well-known predatory journals. These are academic fake journals that are primarily used as a source of income for the companies that publish them. Anyone can publish an article in them as long as they pay hundreds to thousands of euros. As there is no peer review, the academic value is zero. Publishers gain and academics – knowingly or otherwise – use them to pimp their CVs.
Fake conferences – behind which the same companies hide (see box) – work in a similar way. Anyone can join as long as they pay the often high registration fee. What then emerges is a disconnected mishmash of subjects. A lot of public tax money is lost while only the organisers profit. The conferences are nothing more than a new unknown – often for academics too – lottery ticket hanging on a fake academic tree.
Suspicious company
It is time to examine this unusual form of money making closely. The NeuroTalk conference, held last June in a hotel in Budapest, is a perfect example. Several Dutch academics were on the programme. What brought them here and were they aware of this more recent form of malpractice in academia? There was no press accreditation, but by booking a room in the hotel where the conference was held, reporting was easy.
The organisers of this three-day meeting in the chic Radisson Blu Beke Hotel is BITcongress. This is a somewhat suspicious company from China that appears on lists of suspicious congress organisers. BIT is located in Dalian and claims to organise conferences in Europe, Japan and China. The attendees of these kinds of conferences are recruited through flattering invitations and are invited to give a presentation on their ‘important’ research.
Academics receive dozens of these kinds of emails every month – which usually end up in the spam box. Even the reporter, a former academic, received an invitation email for Budapest. The emails often refer to ‘your remarkable research’. This is why these conferences are also referred to as vanity conferences. Most of the researchers that attend do not realise that they have been had.
Most of the researchers that attend do not realise that they have been had
Alexander Minnaert of the University of Groningen accepted one of these email requests, he said after the last morning session at NeuroTalk, in the Britannia II room of the hotel in Budapest. The professor gave a passionate talk about how deaf and blind children can learn to communicate. “I was supposed to have attended a previous conference in Singapore, but it was cancelled because of Covid. I could not get my registration fee back so I ended up going to Budapest.”
The costs as given on the website are USD 1,650 to USD 3,050 per person and the professor’s costs were covered by his university. Minnaert combined the conference with a visit to research project colleagues in the region.
He admitted that the quality of many of the presentations were below par. “As I was to chair a session, I made some suggestions to try to create greater coherence, but they were largely ignored.” The discussions were also sometimes hard to follow. “They went all over the place. And the conference opening was of very poor quality.”
Fake
Despite all this, it is hard at first to label NeuroTalk as fake. There were real academics there who gave real presentations and who had registered voluntarily. And the logistics and amenities at the location are professional. The attendees are well looked after with lots of free lunches and drinks. Every researcher knows that not all regular small conferences are equally good.
But if you looked more closely and talked to the visitors there, it becomes clear that much was not right. There were signs as described in other reports of fake conferences (recently addressed in Nature), in warnings in journals such as Science and again in Nature, and on the websites of universities and companies that produce conference software: How to Spot a Fake Conference in 2024.
One example could be researchers who are listed on programmes without their knowledge. Trainee anaesthetist Marije Wijnberge (Amsterdam AMC) is one of them. ‘I am not a speaker at all’, she emailed in horror when asked about her planned presence in Budapest. ‘I may once have enquired about the event, but what idiocy that they put me on the programme as a speaker.’
‘What idiocy that they put me on the programme as a speaker’
This was not a mistake by the organisers, but seems to have been a conscious strategy. Anyone who responds to an invitation in whatever way runs the risk of their name being included in the provisional programme as bait for their peers.
A second suspicious sign is the complete absence of summaries of the presentations that the academics will give on the conference website. On legitimate conference websites, these are the best way to help visitors decide which presentation to attend. Add to this the facts that the organisation of this conference was not in the hands of a professional association but of an unknown Chinese company, and that anyone who pays can give a presentation and you know that something is not right.
A last red flag is that organisations handily ‘combine’ conferences. In this case, apart from NeuroTalk, there were eight other conferences in the rooms of the Radisson Blu Beke hotel, all of which fell under the BITcongress. They ranged from cardiology to dentistry and had bombastic names like Annual world cancer congress (for which Wijnberge was in the planning) and Annual world congress of smart materials.
None of the interviewed visitors said that they were aware of this. “I didn’t know about this at all,” said Jenny Choi, an American surgeon, in surprise. She was at the hotel for the Annual world congress of digestive disease (AWCDD). The organisers on the spot said that there were about 400 visitors in total. This hid the fact that some of the congresses were virtually meaningless. The AWCDD congress that Choi attended only had two sessions.
Experiences of a TU Delft employee who attended a copycat conference
Sooner or later staff at TU Delft will receive invitations for copycat conferences. An employee at the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering (the name is known to the Editorial Office) attended a conference organised by BITcongress.
He responded with shock when Delta pointed out the reputation of the organisation in an email. It was a few days before the conference started and the employee was already at the other side of the world. He combined a work related visit with attending the conference and said that, despite the news, he would still attend the conference. He would share his findings with us after the conference.
Back in the Netherlands he wrote that he saw little difference with other conferences. He described it as a regular conference that leaned slightly more towards industry. He also noted that most of the attendees were senior professionals such as CEOs, directors, managers, deans and professors. He wrote that ‘There were few young researchers and professionals’.
He added that, in parallel to the conference that he attended, there were six other meetings on the theme of ‘international exchange of professionals’ in the same period. He believes that the composition of attendees was an opportunity to ‘make valuable high level social contacts’. (Delta / Marjolein van der Veldt)
Not top in their fields
Nevertheless, educator Minnaert did not perceive the meeting in Budapest to be a scam, he said when asked. “Everyone is always saying that there has to be more cross-pollination between academic fields. This is happening case here. Personally, I found the jump to medicine interesting and I have made a couple of new contacts. After my presentation, someone asked me if I would be going to the afternoon session as he wanted to continue our discussion.”
‘I found the jump to medicine interesting and I have made a couple of new contacts’
His colleague Behrooz Alizadeh, an epidemiologist at the University Medical Centre Groningen (UMCG), is less impressed. ‘If the interdisciplinarity had been professionally elaborated, it could have been really interesting, but it is not at all so now,’ he says in a seating area on the first floor of the hotel. Like many other participants, the Groningen epidemiologist is also unhappy about the scientific level. ‘Many speakers are not top performers in their field, not even the keynote speakers. It’s mostly good for their own CV, which is dubious.’
Why was he there? “I wanted to try one out.” Before the congress he responded somewhat defensively to this question (it is an ordinary legitimate congress, he emailed), but now on the spot he was more open. “This is not a congress which I would normally go to, but the organisation paid my registration fee and one night in the hotel.”
One important reason to accept the invitation email was that he would initially speak at the umbrella keynote forum which all 400 visitors could attend. But that did not go ahead in the end. “That annoys me as it was not part of the agreement.”
Pensioners
Apart from the two people from Groningen, there were a handful of Dutch people on the programme. Apart from Amsterdam University’s Wijnberge (who did not attend), there was Ciska Heida, a Parkinson’s Disease researcher, from the University of Twente (UT). The broad programme of NeuroTalk appealed to her, she explained after her presentation. “The more well-known congresses often invite the usual suspects as speakers.”
Her professional presentation about recent research into how virtual reality and special vibrating socks can help patients with Parkinson’s Disease walk better, was in sharp contrast to the quality of many other presentations. They were barely state-of-the-art, and covered scientific studies dating back five years or more.
‘It was a bit of a pensioners’ event’
This was not an exception as the average age of the speakers was high and some of them were even retired. One was Roberto Avola, a 73 year old professor from Sicily. He shuffled forward for his presentation, sat at his laptop and literally read the texts on his slides aloud with an Italian accent that was hard to understand. Heida too said that “It was indeed a bit of a pensioners’ event.”
Deceived
It was hardly surprising that some attendees felt cheated, such as Marisol Hernández from the University of Chile. “I came because I was invited and there would be interesting talks about leadership and health. But the subjects were far too different. At other conferences you make new contacts that are useful for your academic development. This was a completely useless conference. I feel deceived.” Her attendance cost her thousands of euros – a far bigger expense for Chileans whose consumer spending power is less than many Western researchers.
Dutch academics too have been cheated financially. “I fell for it. Now I’ve lost EUR 1,000,” says Niels, a post-doc researcher at Utrecht University who preferred not to be named in full. A month before the congress he said on the phone that he had originally registered for NeuroTalk because the website stated that the speakers would also include people from the industry.
This would fit the shift he wanted to make from fundamental to more applied research. “I hoped to talk to people who were further along this process.” He was not familiar with the congress, but as there were researchers from Groningen University on the programme, he felt confident.
He was also pressured to decide quickly to get a discount – another well-known tactic. “Only after I had paid – more than EUR 1,000 – did I do any research into the organisers. I then discovered that there were all kinds of warnings about them online.” But by then it was too late. “I wanted to cancel my registration, but would then only get part of my fee back.”
‘I wanted to cancel my registration, but would then only get part of my fee back’
The EUR 1,000 that Niels has now lost he paid from his own pocket as the department did not cover his registration. “I feel really stupid, but I hope my experience will be a warning about this kind of abuse to as many people as possible.”
More fake than real congresses
How big is the fake conference business? There are few hard figures. A couple of years ago the British researcher Andy Nobes came to the conclusion that there are probably more predatory than real conferences. A big player is the Indian OMICS, also notorious as a publisher of all kinds of fake journals, which organises about 3,000 conferences a year. Another well-known group is the World Academy of Science, Engineering and Technology (WASET).
In 2016 OMICS was sued by the American antitrust authorities for the misleading character of their conferences and journals. A court sentenced the Indian company to pay a fine of more than USD 50 million. OMICS denied this strongly and lodged a counter claim of EUR 3 billion. (HOP / Stan van Pelt)
Millions in profits
The local representatives of BITcongress were not aware of any bad intentions. They comprised a handful of Chinese employees who managed the on-site logistics for three days. Mister Liu was one of them. When asked he confirmed that the academics did indeed receive email invitations, and that everyone who responded positively and paid the registration fee was entitled to give a presentation. He told this as though it was not out of the ordinary.
Liu said that the conference upholds the objectives of his organisation. “My boss is a doctor and an entrepreneur and started these conferences to bring academics and corporate professionals together.” How much money BIT will retain is hard to determine, but the turnover just from the registration fees quickly amount to about one million euros. The hotel says that the costs that they charge are confidential.
‘If I had known this in advance, I would not have come’
BITcongress is not amused when I shared the criticism about this type of congress with them by email. “Are you joking?” responded a certain Anna Li on behalf of the organisation. “We incur high costs. We have organised these kinds of conferences for 10 years now and have invited almost 100 Nobel Prize winners. The speakers value us enormously.”
None of the visitors was intending to attend the following events which the programme booklet states will be in Dublin and Stockholm. “This was a one-time thing, never again,” says the Utrecht University researcher Heida. “If I had known this in advance, I would not have come.” The same goes for Alizadeh from the UMCG. “But, for the sake of awareness, it is good to experience this once.”
It probably makes little difference to the organisation behind the conference. The company already had the loot. It can use the group photos and the names of the visitors in Budapest in ads for future events. This keeps the system going and will generate continued interest. After all, there are plenty of academics in the world who they can approach.
Even the reporter received an email soon afterwards to come and speak at NeuroTalk Dublin. Anyone registering now will get a 50% discount worth USD 750. A proposal for a nonsensical presentation about the influence of extraterrestrial beings on our brain activity was accepted without question. And the registration costs are negotiable. ‘How much can you pay to attend?’
HOP, Stan van Pelt
What does TU Delft say?
TU Delft has no centralised guidelines or policies about copycat conferences. When asked, a spokesperson explained that interest in the subject differs according to faculty and sometimes even to research departments. “This type of conference is known to some research departments, and others have never heard of them.”
“I have never received a report about a fake conference,” said the Faculty Secretary of the Aerospace Engineering Faculty. “We do not have a particular policy, blacklist or other means to inform our staff about it.” In part, the small scale of the field may explain this. “Our academics mostly attend well-known conferences in the small field of aerospace engineering. The situation may be different for other fields.”
Fake conferences are a known phenomenon at the Faculty of Technology, Policy and Management (TPM). Still, no blacklist is kept. “New organisers constantly appear so it would not be effective,” said the Faculty Secretary. The focus thus lies on the well-known and trustworthy conferences that do have good reputations. TPM keeps rankings of legitimate conferences in the Faculty’s fields which are leading. Staff members are encouraged to be critical. “If you do not know any of the organisers or any of the universities that are involved, take this as warning.”
The Faculty of Civil Engineering and Geosciences (CEG) has a similar approach. They do not have blacklists, but the research groups discuss the conferences that are relevant. “You often recognise fake conferences for their lack of a steering committee with familiar names. Staff members generally know the conferences that are of value,” said the Faculty Secretary. (Delta / Marjolein van der Veldt)
This publication came about with the support of the VWN Tripfonds. A detailed version will be published next year in a book by the author about scientific integrity (Too good to be true, Lebowski).
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