Questionable conferences and presenters from top-ranked universities

1. Introduction

Academic conferences have been an important means of scholarly communication and the dissemination of tacit knowledge among researchers for decades. With the proliferation of research evaluation, audit culture, and the internationalisation of science, attending and presenting at conferences have become key elements in research output in every field of science. Researchers (and their institutions) spend substantial sums, time, and resources on planning, travelling to, attending, and presenting at conferences. Reducing the financial costs and environmental/ecological impact of these conferences (i.e. heavy carbon footprints, carbon emissions) has been discussed in the literature, mainly in recent years [1–3]. Originally, scientific conferences were primarily organised by learned societies or universities. However, with the development of an entire industry surrounding science communication, specialised companies have emerged to organise or assist in the organisation of scientific conferences. This has also created a niche in the market for companies that are less interested in communicating science and more interested in profiting financially from organising these conferences. Such companies use two ‘arguments’ associated with academic (mostly ‘international’) conferences to attract researchers to their events. First, presenting at conferences is perceived as a necessary step in any research career, and being an invited keynote speaker is considered a hallmark of prestige. Second, prior to the onset of COVID-19, presentations at conferences were mostly linked to distant travel (which resulted in significant financial costs and ecological damage); thus, conferences were often organised in the most popular tourist destinations to attract researchers.

Over the past decade, there have been many academic articles published that warn against these so-called ‘predatory’ or ‘questionable’ conferences [4–8]. We prefer to use the term ‘questionable’ to avoid attributing unscrupulous intentions a priori to both these conferences’ participants and their organisers. Nonetheless, such conferences are characterised by their use of misappropriated photos and biographies of researchers from prestigious institutions [9], their use of names that resemble those of prestigious and long-running conferences, and their offering of low-quality academic meetings that gather researchers from almost all fields of science during one event. Thus, many researchers – both early-career investigators and those at the senior level – may be misled into attending such a conference. Presenting or helping to organise such a conference (by accepting, e.g. a role as scientific committee board member) can damage the reputations of researchers if or when their academic communities recognise their participation in these types of questionable conferences [10]. Most papers on questionable conferences do not systematically study such events; however, they do describe and caution against participation in conferences that advertise through spam emails and that organise low-quality events only in tourist destinations. The Caltech Library provides a guide to questionable conferences that is widely known as the Caltech list [11]. The Dolos list is based on Beall’s list but wider in scope. The Dolos list provided the names of ‘dubious or fake conferences organizers’; unfortunately, it is no longer accessible [12]. Sonne et al. [13] called for a list of questionable conferences analogous to the list of predatory journals initiated by Beall. In 2019, South Korea announced a new policy that would serve to reduce the participation of researchers in certain ‘weak’ conferences [14] that were previously confirmed by analysis and a sting operation [15].

This study provides a systematic analysis of conference structures organised by two companies, namely, OMICS (Conference Series LLC LTD, part of the OMICS International group) and WASET (World Academy of Science, Engineering, and Technology), along with an analysis of the presenters at these conferences in terms of their home countries and affiliated institutions. Moreover, this article analyzes whether the presenters at conferences organised by these companies were researchers from top-ranked institutions in the three global university rankings (Academic Ranking of World Universities, Times Higher Education World University Rankings, and QS World University Rankings), either as presenters or invited keynote speakers. This study focused on events organised between 2015 and 2017, analysing 26,163 presentations (presenters) at 935 OMICS conferences and 14,061 presentations (presenters) at 296 WASET conferences.

The conferences organised by OMICS and WASET are identified as ‘predatory’ or ‘questionable’ in the literature [16–19]. Although there is an attempt to underline the networking possibilities at OMICS conferences [20], it is clear that networking is one of the most common aims/results of academic conferences. Also, as made clear by Edwards [21], who attended one of the OMICS conferences, there are good quality attendees/presentations at these conferences; however, these positive aspects do not outweigh the drawbacks of the organisation as a whole.

At the DEF CON 26 conference in 2018, a group of journalists presented findings of their investigations on OMICS and WASET that demonstrated how WASET conferences work and highlighted the low academic standards of these events [22]. In 2019, the US District Court for the District of Nevada ordered OMICS to pay $50.1 million in damages as the result of a US Federal Trade Commission investigation. A press release from the commission states that

the defendants [OMICS] allegedly include the names of prominent researchers as participants and presenters at the conferences, which charge registration fees that can cost more than $1,000, when in fact many of those researchers often did not agree to participate in the events [9].

In 2020, OMICS rebranded hundreds of websites, removed references to OMICS, and introduced the ‘Hilaris’ brand [23].

Regarding WASET conferences, we believe that it is crucial to investigate the current approach to WASET in Turkey – the birthplace of this conference organiser. There are, however, no existing studies that have been published on WASET conferences in Turkey. The primary reason for this lack of literature may be a court decision reached in 2016 [24] that considered Law no. 5651, which enables blocking content published on the Internet [25]. After various news and blog posts about sting operations that aimed to send fake papers to the conferences and the subsequent acceptance of these papers [26,27], the WASET founder filed suit on 14 March 2016, to block the news on the web, which the Criminal Court allowed on 17 March 2016. Nearly 50 websites were blocked following the decision. Since these developments, no further studies on WASET in Turkey have been conducted.

2. Material and methods

Obtaining data on the OMICS and WASET conferences is crucial to addressing our research question. However, this study faced various challenges related not only to harvesting data from websites (multiple data structures, particularly with OMICS websites) but also – and most importantly – regarding the structure of the conferences themselves. Moreover, this study found that various conferences were intentionally duplicated or triplicated by using various conference titles. We have made every effort to ensure that the data in this study are accurate; however, we recognise that it is challenging to identify all potential problems. Therefore, we manually verified key data from the perspective of this study, such as information about conference venues and presenters’ countries of origin and institutional affiliations.

2.2. Structure of the conferences

We have identified two different conference structures. The first structure relates to the OMICS conferences that seem to take the form of ‘regular’ conferences (i.e. there is a venue and conference dates with a list of presenters included within a conference programme). There is only one programme for each conference. In the 2015–2017 period, OMICS organised 1195 conferences. We were able to reach the websites of 1124 of these conferences and download complete data about the presentations and presenters from 1011 conferences. However, the data we gathered also contained 77 ‘twin conferences’ (even a ‘triplet conference’ was found) that had different websites linking to events that looked almost identical. These twin conferences were organised in the same venue on the same dates (in a few cases, the dates were different on a website but the same in a PDF file describing the programme). Although the conferences had different titles and PDF files with programmes at both events, these programmes contained the same keynotes and presenters with identical presentation orders. We manually analysed the 1011 conference programmes to discover cases such as these. We excluded from the sample all identified duplicate conferences and presentations from twin conferences that took place at the same venue on the exact same dates. Following these exclusions, our sample consisted of 935 unique OMICS conferences. The following example illustrates typical OMICS practice. The Third International Conference on Genetic and Protein Engineering (10 Plenary Forums – 1 Event) was organised in Las Vegas, Nevada, in the United States from 8–9 November 2017. During these two days, there were a total of four keynotes and 30 regular presentations. At the same time (8–9 November 2017) in the same city (Las Vegas), The Third Antibodies and Bio Therapeutics Congress B2B was organised and held. Each event had a different website: https://protein-engineering.conferenceseries.com/2017/ (Accessed on 22 March 2021) and https://antibodies.conferenceseries.com/2017 (Accessed on 22 March 2021). However, all the presentations from the first event, including their titles and abstracts, were included in the programme of the second event in the identical order. However, the second event also had a poster session that formed the last part of the event before the closing ceremony. The presenters from that poster session could be found in the PDF programme of the first conference, although they did not appear in the programme on the website of the first event. Because of this, we removed all duplicate presentations and, ultimately, the entire first event from our sample. What remained was only the second conference, which contained all the presentations of the first conference as well as the poster session.

The structure of WASET’s conferences differs to some extent. For all WASET conferences organised during 2015–2017 that are available in the Wayback Machine – Internet Archive, three levels of events can be identified. Figure 1 illustrates how one actual event (Level 1 = Event), meaning one conference at a certain venue and on a certain date, is divided into various topics (Level 2 = Topics), which are eventually presented as separate conferences (Level 3 = Conference). Figure 1 shows the actual numbers from our data set for 296 events (of the 335 organised by WASET during the analysed period) and 9452 topics, which were eventually organised and are accessible through the Wayback Machine – Internet Archive.

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Figure 1.

Structure of conferences organised by WASET.

On Level 1, there are a venue and dates, for instance, Paris, December 30–31, 2015. On Level 2, there are multiple topics (i.e. during the event organised on December 30, 2015, in Paris): there are 27 topics ranging from ‘Nuclear and Quantum Engineering’ to ‘Humanities and Social Sciences’. Every topic from Level 2 is divided into multiple ‘conferences’ that appear on Level 3. Conferences organised within one topic from Level 2 (e.g. Humanities and Social Sciences) were divided into three separate conferences on Level 3, for instance: International Conference on e-Commerce, e-Business and e-Service; International Conference on Anti-Corruption, Good Governance and Human Rights; and International Conference on People, Politics, and Media.

The WASET conference programme, however, is the same for all topics. In one session of such a conference, there are presentations on all topics from Level 2 (e.g. ‘Review of Current Literature on Use of Prazosin for Treatment of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder Related Sleep Disturbances in Child and Adolescent Population’ and ‘Stakeholder Management in Project Environments’).

Our analysis revealed that all conferences from Level 3 that were held in one place on a specific date (Level 1, e.g. Paris, 30–31 December 2015) had the same programme. Therefore, in the final process of data collection, we harvested data directly from the WASET website only for Level 1 (including programmes and abstracts). Such conference structures might serve to hold broad conferences; however, at the same time, they allow researchers participating in them to appear relatively professional and focused.

Finally, for events organised from 2015 to 2017, our data set provides information on 935 conferences organised by OMICS and 296 organised by WASET.

3. Results

3.1. Conference venues

We analysed the cities and countries in which OMICS- and WASET-organised conferences and found that both companies organised conferences in 75 cities, mostly in Europe and North America. The two cities with the highest number of conferences organised by OMICS were London (with 72) and Dubai (with 65). WASET organised its highest number of conferences in London and Paris (with 36 conferences in both cities). Table 1 presents a top 10 list of countries in terms of the number of organised conferences and of presentations given during these events. In total, 996 conferences (81% of all conferences) were organised in these countries.

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Table 1.

Top 10 countries in which OMICS and WASET conferences were organised.

Country	Number of presentations	Number of conferences
United States of America	10,266	356
United Kingdom	4711	139
Spain	3395	104
Italy	3064	85
United Arab Emirates	1898	67
Germany	1991	60
France	2506	57
Japan	1656	44
Australia	1122	42
Canada	1367	42

WASET: World Academy of Science, Engineering, and Technology.

Figure 2 illustrates the venues of these conferences. The size of each circle represents the number of conferences held during the 2015–2017 period.

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Figure 2.

Venues of OMICS and WASET conferences.Note. City names are presented for the venues in which a company organised at least 25 conferences.

Furthermore, we analysed the conferences’ venues compared with the most popular tourist destinations. We found that 62% of OMICS and 89% of WASET conferences in the 2015–2017 period were organised in cities classified as ‘top 100’ city destinations in 2019 [30].

3.2. Presenters by country

At OMICS and WASET, 26,163 and 14,061 presentations, respectively (40,224 in total), were presented during 1232 conferences in the years 2015–2017. At OMICS conferences, there were presenters from 167 different countries, whereas at WASET conferences, 143 countries were represented.

Table 2 shows the top 20 countries with the highest numbers of presenters (in total). The 29,665 presenters from those 20 countries constituted 70% of all presentations.

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Table 2.

Top 20 countries with the highest number of presenters (in sum of both conferences).

Country	OMICS		WASET		Total
	n	%	n	%	n	%
United States of America	5060	19.3	518	3.7	5578	13.9
India	2341	8.9	969	6.9	3310	8.2
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland	1225	4.7	580	4.1	1805	4.5
Turkey	686	2.6	1014	7.2	1700	4.2
China	1240	4.7	380	2.7	1620	4.0
Korea, Republic of	527	2.0	965	6.9	1492	3.7
Japan	726	2.8	419	3.0	1145	2.8
Taiwan, Province of China	472	1.8	659	4.7	1131	2.8
Iran (the Islamic Republic of)	535	2.0	557	4.0	1092	2.7
Egypt	748	2.9	335	2.4	1083	2.7
Germany	696	2.7	254	1.8	950	2.4
Canada	699	2.7	222	1.6	921	2.3
Saudi Arabia	672	2.6	219	1.6	891	2.2
Brazil	575	2.2	275	2.0	850	2.1
Australia	545	2.1	296	2.1	841	2.1
Italy	647	2.5	169	1.2	816	2.0
Malaysia	269	1.0	489	3.5	758	1.9
France	581	2.2	174	1.2	755	1.9
Thailand	153	0.6	599	4.3	752	1.9
South Africa	428	1.6	218	1.6	646	1.6
Total	18,825	72.0	9311	66.2	28,136	69.9

Figure 3 illustrates the number of presenters per country at the OMICS conferences, grouped into regions. The highest numbers of presenters were affiliated with the United States (N = 5060) and India (N = 2341). Of the 26,163 OMICS presenters, 4033 were classified as keynotes. The average share of keynotes among presenters from a given country is 6.9% (median is 11.9%).

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Figure 3.

Number of presenters per country at OMICS conferences.Note. Country names are presented only for countries with more than 550 presenters. The percentage of presenters who are keynotes is shown in square brackets.

Figure 4 shows the number of presenters per country at the WASET conferences, grouped into regions. The highest numbers of presenters were affiliated with Turkey (N = 1014) and India (N = 969). The share of keynotes is not presented in this figure because WASET keynotes constitute only 0.7% of all presentations. Of the 96 keynotes given, 21 were from the United States, 20 from Malaysia, and eight from India.

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Figure 4.

Number of presenters per country at the WASET conferences.Note. Country names are presented only for countries with more than 200 presenters.

3.3. Conference venues, presenters, and the economic levels of countries

Figure 5 shows the income levels of countries in which the conferences are organised and with which the presenters are affiliated. The colour of inner circles represents the conference venues (countries). Thus, a blue inner circle indicates conferences organised in high-income countries. The outer circles show the distribution of presenters regarding their affiliations. The findings reveal that 93% of OMICS conferences were held in high-income countries, while this rate is 84% for WASET. It is possible to say that WASET conferences are held more frequently in upper-middle-income countries compared with OMICS conferences (6% for OMICS; 15% for WASET).

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Figure 5.

Distribution of income levels of countries (conference venues and presenters by country).

Looking at the number of papers presented at the conferences, an interesting distribution can be seen. For OMICS, an average of 28 papers are presented per conference in high-income countries versus 20 papers in upper-middle-income countries, while the latter number is 78 in lower-middle-income countries. For WASET, these ratios were calculated as 50, 37, and 32, respectively. In light of these figures, it is obvious that when OMICS conferences are held in lower-income level countries, they attract the attention of participants who are affiliated with these countries.

The results show that both conference organisations, when their conferences are held in upper-middle- or lower-middle-income level countries, attract more attention from these groups of countries. It is possible to interpret this result in the following way: participants from these countries attend these conferences in countries where access to conferences is economically easier. However, future investigations are needed to reveal other reasons behind this phenomenon.

3.4. Presenters from top-ranked universities

We found that 2873 of 26,163 OMICS presenters (11.0%) were affiliated with 152 different institutions ranked in the top 100 of one of the three rankings (2063 in the top 100 of ARWU; 1983 in the top 100 of THE; and 2092 in the top 100 of QS). Of 14,061 WASET presenters, 800 (5.7%) were affiliated with 121 different institutions that were ranked in the top 100 in one of the three rankings (388 in the top 100 of ARWU; 481 in the top 100 of THE; and 673 in the top 100 of QS).

The participation of 147 researchers from Top 7 universities (Harvard University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Chicago, Stanford University, California Institute of Technology, the University of Cambridge, and the University of Oxford) at the OMICS and WASET conferences was examined in detail in two parts. The first part presents analyses of conference papers, and the second part presents information about the researchers’ participation in these conferences.

3.4.1. Investigation of conference papers presented at OMICS and WASET conferences by Top 7 universities

A total of 176 papers were presented during the conferences by 147 unique presenters from Top 7 universities. Four of these papers were presented at more than one conference. The number of unique titles within this group is 170. Details of these papers are shown in Figure 6.

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Figure 6.

Information about papers presented by authors from Top 7 universities.

Although it might be expected that most of the papers presented by authors from top universities would be keynote speeches, Figure 6 shows that only 22% of the presentations by these authors were keynotes. Also, there were interesting results for papers presented at these conferences: 15 papers were published in different publication venues, such as scholarly journals or seminars, before the OMICS or WASET conferences. The titles and abstracts of these publications were nearly identical to the abstracts found in the conference programmes. Thus, one interpretation is that the authors were invited to the conferences in consideration of their publications. Another possibility may be that the authors attended these conferences to disseminate their current papers to the scientific community. Conversely, the names of the researchers may have been added to the programme without their permission. However, the probability of this is very low because, in response to the email that we sent to researchers to confirm their participation in these conferences, all researchers who replied confirmed their participation.

In a revealing result, we found that six papers were published in different venues as proceedings or full-text articles following their presentation at these conferences. It is a common practice to publish extended/full-text versions of conference presentations in books of abstracts or special issues of scientific journals. However, these six publications have no connection with the questionable conferences. For example, an identical twin of an OMICS conference abstract presented in 2016 was again presented in the programme of an IEEE conference in 2017 with three additional authors. Similarly, one abstract covered by OMICS in 2017 was presented at a different conference later in the same year. One year later, the authors published a full-text version of this paper using the same statistical data and results in an international journal without giving any credit to preliminary works.

3.4.2. Investigation of researchers affiliated with Top 7 universities

We collected data regarding researchers’ positions at the time of their respective conferences and their actual positions in April 2021. Figure 7 displays a detailed summary of the conference participants.

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Figure 7.

Previous and current positions of conference participants from Top 7 universities.^*Although authors’ affiliations are indicated as Top 7 universities on conference websites, the biographies of these authors on the same websites indicate that these authors graduated from these universities and are not currently affiliated with them.

Surprising results were obtained regarding authors’ affiliation information. Although some of the presenters graduated many years ago from Top 7 universities or were students/collaborators of these universities for a short period, they were nevertheless added to the conference programme with Top 7 university affiliations. It remains unknown whether these addresses were added at the authors’ request or by the conference organisations. A significant finding of this study reveals that more than half of the researchers within the data set were still working in Top 7 universities, even if their positions had changed. On the other hand, the fact that the majority of researchers were students or postdoctoral researchers points to two important aspects: the expertise of individuals from these groups may not be sufficient for them to follow the conferences in their fields, and the participation of these groups within these conferences may result from the pressures of academic promotion and tenure. These questions can only be answered through participant interviews.

Within the scope of the study, we investigated whether 147 conference participants from Top 7 universities listed their participation in these conferences on their websites or social networks (see Figure 8). With the help of this analysis, we concluded that 19 researchers shared their papers, metadata of these papers, or presentation videos on their pages or networks. Seven researchers listed different versions of their papers (article versions), while 58 did not have an accessible publication list or CV on the web. Furthermore, it is possible to follow the confirmation rates of authors in Figure 8. The low rate of confirmation, along with the high rate of not sharing the papers anywhere (43%), suggests that these people did not actually attend the conference. A recent Nature paper on OMICS provides examples of using people’s names without their consent [23].

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Figure 8.

Confirmations of Attendance at the Conferences (N = 147 presenters from Top 7 Universities).

4. Discussion and conclusions

Scholarly conferences that are open to researchers from various disciplines and held in tourist destinations have been a subject of discussion in academic circles for many years. There is a commonly held belief that these conferences are questionable. However, such conferences are still held in various countries. The main aim of this study was to examine these questionable conferences in terms of their venues and participants. In this context, two organisations, namely OMICS and WASET, were examined in depth.

Because data on questionable conferences is difficult to obtain, only part of the data collection process could be automated. We made every effort to obtain as much data as possible and to ensure its accuracy and correctness. However, we are aware that some inaccuracies may appear in the results, either due to data quality or to the carelessness of the conference organisers. Therefore, we publish full codes for harvesting the data in the appendices of this study to allow readers to replicate our research.

We analysed 935 conferences organised by OMICS and 296 conferences organised by WASET from 2015 through 2017. We investigated 40,224 presenters and focused on top-ranked institutions according to three global university ranking systems. We found that 11.0% of OMICS and 5.7% of WASET presenters were affiliated with institutions ranked in the top 100 in one of the three global university rankings. We also found that both companies mostly organised conferences in cities that were top tourist destinations.

Considering the high number of OMICS conferences held in the United States (in various cities) in comparison with WASET, the expected result is that OMICS events would be primarily participated in by researchers from the United States. However, researchers from India, the United Kingdom, and China also represented a significant share of the presenters. These conferences also attracted a significantly higher percentage of presenters from Top 7 universities than did conferences organised by WASET. However, WASET, being based in Turkey, where Istanbul is among the top venues, attracted the most researchers from Turkey, India, and South Korea. Only a few researchers from Top 7 universities participated in WASET conferences. The presenters’ countries for WASET and OMICS greatly differ from widely known conferences in different areas. A study [31] that evaluated the first 20 Frontiers in Service Conferences (1992–2011) found that presenters represented 57 different countries, where 87.9% of the presenters at the 1992–2001 conferences and 74.2% of the presenters at the 2002–2011 conferences represented 10 countries (the United States, Germany, Australia, the United Kingdom, Sweden, the Netherlands, Canada, Finland, Norway, and New Zealand). The 25th International Conference on Science, Technology and Innovation Indicators (STI 2021) was held online with 61 presenters from 17 countries, of whom 77% were from seven countries (the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Norway, Denmark, the United States, Germany, and Belgium).

The other remarkable finding was the high number of keynotes for OMICS (15.4%). The share of keynotes is generally well below this value for widely known academic conferences. For instance, there were two keynotes at STI2021 (3.2%) and at ASIS&T 2021 (0.84%). Because the keynotes are privileged regarding their registration, accommodation, and/or travel costs, this may be a strategy to attract prestigious scientists for the recognition/validation of these questionable conferences, as also mentioned by Broman [32]. On the other hand, Edwards [21], who was an invited speaker at one of the OMICS conferences, was suspicious that everyone who attended the conference was invited. As is widely known, it is a common questionable publisher behaviour to flatter scientists by inviting them to publish/present [33].

These highly international events, during which people from the entire scientific spectrum present their findings, can be the birthplace of new ideas, interesting cross-disciplinary research topics that might change the world, or avenues of possible inclusion into the scientific community for young researchers. These events can also serve as a forum for individuals affiliated with (semi)peripheral countries to share their ideas and find research partners from different disciplines, institutions, or countries. As stated by one of the participants now affiliated with a (semi)peripheral country with whom we conducted an interview, being invited to give a keynote speech at an international event is not something that happens all the time to those affiliated with non-central countries, especially considering the fact that organisers make participation possible by partially waiving the conference fee. However, according to the conference programme, this participant was affiliated with a Top 7 institution, even though they only completed some of their education at that institution.

When perusing the websites and programmes of conferences organised by OMICS and WASET, one might get the impression of having missed an opportunity to participate in exciting scientific events. However, questionable practices like creating twin conferences with the same programme or organising hundreds of artificial events during one legitimate event, as well as OMICS’ multimillion-dollar fine from the Federal Trade Commission, are facts that do not create an impression of legitimacy. Thus, providing answers about the intentions of a company that, according to its own website, organised more than 100,000 conferences in 3 years (~1000 conferences a day) while, at the same time, silencing all comments about its practices by a court ruling, could be revealing.

It is important to note that none of the authors of the present study have attended any conferences by OMICS or WASET. For this reason, we would like to state that all findings presented in this study are based solely on information acquired via conference websites and are related neither to the contents of the papers presented therein nor the quality of the conferences. The results of the present research confirm that although participation in questionable conferences is considered problematic by scientific communities, even researchers from the seven leading universities in the world (according to university ranking systems) participate in these conferences. There may be different reasons for this. Researchers may have been invited by the organisers to share their current research, the conference may have been held in a nearby city, or there may have been other unforeseen reasons. Understanding these reasons will provide important findings not just for conferences organised by OMICS or WASET but for all scientific conferences.

The fact that the vast majority of researchers from Top 7 universities who attended these questionable conferences were students or early-career investigators may indicate that young researchers face various challenges regarding awareness of prestigious conferences in their fields and lack of judgement in assessing the legitimacy of conferences. While drawing attention to the need for raising awareness on this issue, this finding also reveals that universities should implement stricter and well-informed policies regarding publishing platforms. Conversely, this situation can also be explained by the publishing pressure faced by young scholars. In this respect, it is of great importance to investigate researchers’ main motivations to participate in scientific conferences. We aim to investigate this issue in a future quantitative study.

According to the results of our research, there is no control mechanism for the affiliations given on the conference websites. Throughout this research, it was determined that the addresses of Top 7 universities were used even for researchers who had been students of or short-term collaborators at these universities many years prior. While this may be the author’s preference, it can also be a strategic method for attracting participants to the conference. If it is a move to attract participants, it requires more attention.

We believe that the increasing pressure in various countries for participation in international conferences will increase the number of organisers of questionable or predatory conferences. Therefore, it is crucial to educate students and early-career investigators, in particular, and show them how to recognise a high-quality and legitimate conference. Those responsible for such education are primarily supervisors and research group leaders, who are sometimes unaware of the challenges and pressures faced by young researchers. We believe that building a database of predatory or questionable conferences will not be an effective tool because companies can, as the OMICS case shows, rebrand quickly. Instead, academic communities need a range of tools and initiatives that aim to educate researchers from all fields and build trust in credible conferences.

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