"Is this conference predatory?" ICECCHH Amsterdam 2018

Hi everyone, here is a question from our Dgroups discussion, which I thought I would answer here:

"I want to attend this conference ICECCHH Amsterdam 2018: 20th International Conference on Environment, Climate Change and Human Health

'International Conference on Environment, Climate Change and Human Health, ICECCHH Amsterdam 2018'

Let me get your comments if it is not predatory one"

I would be cautious about spending any of your hard-earned money (or even financial aid) on international flights to attend an event like this.

The organisers of this conference are called WASET (World Academy of Science, Engineering and Technology). If you do a Google search of this organisation you will see that many people are unhappy with this organisation, and consider it 'predatory' or 'junk' conference organiser. Looking at the website of this conference, there are two reds flags that stand out to me:

The draft programme is very strange: https://waset.org/conference/2018/05/amsterdam/program. The panel sessions have up to 20 presentations crammed into them – that's ridiculous. Also, the presentation subjects don’t seem to be related to the conference theme, which is climate change and human health – “Application of De Novo Programming Approach for Optimizing the Business Process”, “Zen Enlightenment in John Cage's Late Music and Visual Arts”, “Tracking and Analysis of the Difference of Traditional Dance Performances in Sri Lanka” …

You could argue that the organisers have confused this with some other conferences and provided the wrong information. I wouldn't be surprised because WASET have already organised well over a HUNDRED environment-themed confereces around the world in May 2018 alone. This is just in one subject area- there are also 50 other areas https://www.waset.org/Conferences. They have thousands of events going on around the world every month. This is mass-production of academic conferences on a truly global scale!

I really wouldn't trust this organisation to organise a good quality academic conference. We provided this guide to spotting predatory conference publishers, which might be helpful: http://www.authoraid.info/en/news/details/1156/

Does anybody have any experiences with WASET conferences, either positive or negative? Please share.

Best wishes

Andy

 

Andy,

           I had a quick look at the links you gave. It is really bad. The keynote speakers are just copy-paste from previous WASET conferences. The speakers are already set, but only their country is given - not good. Below is a link to a site set up by some disgusted attendees who are taking the organizers (the Ardil family) to court. There were just 10 people at the WASET conference that they attended.

WASET conference scam

Thanks Alan, that blog provides lots of information (including personal experience) on why WASET should be avoided - it's incredible to note that they are hosting 58,000 'conferences' this year! That's over 150 per day....

I agree -- stay clear of WASET... Here is an interesting blog post that relates directly to this type of conference and which I came across recently: http://tidsskriftet.no/en/2017/11/fra-redaktoren/dr-dreiers-method

Dear Andy, Thanks indeed for your clarification. It is very informative and helpful

Hi Is this the same company https://cies.education/conferences/barcelona2019-may-event/.  I recently got accepted to this event and I was wondering if it was a predatory conference.