Many academics are aware of predatory or low-quality journals, but I get the impression that many are not as aware of predatory or low-quality conferences.
Christine Ro has just released an article in Nature describing the difficulty of knowing what you’re going to get when you decide to go to a new conference. This is a follow-up to an article last year about exploitative predatory conferences.
An underlying question that is not addressed in either article is, “Why would you go to a conference that you didn’t know?”
Many researchers are introduced to conference through their mentors. Many of them are conferences run by scientific societies. That continuity is a big benefit of societies running annual conferences. They are known and trusted.
I know from personal experience that people end up with projects that cut across disciplines and are interesting to people in fields that you were not trained in. Again, it is usually not difficult to find a well-established scholarly society that has been running an annual conference for decades.
Why go to a conference that isn’t connected to a society, that doesn’t have a track record? What is the perceived value of going to a new conference by a commercial company? This is not to say such conferences are bad, but they represent a significant change from the tradition of conferences run by academics.
Ro’s article quotes researcher Olivier Sandre:
Sandre advises students to be cautious with unfamiliar conferences, advising them to attend established ones at which they can be confident about making useful contacts. ... Now that he is more selective about which conferences he attends, he’s particularly wary of those run by businesses rather than learned societies. It’s fine when companies arrange practical services, such as meals, but he feels that the scientific content needs to be decided on by scientists. If he does not recognize the name of a single member of the organizing committee, he’s doubtful that the conference will be a good one.
In other words, conferences are about building a trusted community.
The bottom line from both articles:
Conference experiences are often a mixed bag. But understanding the potential and limitations of a conference ahead of time can help to manage expectations and assess the value of attending, even if it requires quite a bit of upfront research.One resource mentioned is the “Think. Check. Attend.” website. It seems nice enough. I would also search for the conference on social media and look for whether people you trust have been to an earlier version of the conference. Searching the Flaky Academic Conferences blog might also be a useful tool, although I wish it was updated more regularly.
References
Ro C. 2024. How to spot a predatory conference, and what science needs to do about them: a guide. Nature 632: 219-220. https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-024-02360-2
Ro C. 2025. How to know whether a conference is right for you. Nature. https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-025-00903-9
External links
Flaky Academic Conferences (blog - not updated in a long time)
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