The OMICS-ConferenceSeries

Reuel M. Bennett
Aug 9, 2017 · 6 min read

A glimpse: The Omics group

OMICS Publishing group is a “scientific” organization established in 2007 at Hyderabad, India. The organization claims to be a publisher of open access journals and boasts a “rigorous” peer review system. The group introduced several hundreds of journals, encompassing the wide scope of sciences and is publicly OPEN to all readers, which of course, will cost you several hundreds of dollars.

The group went under fire because of some issues regarding the validity of peer review, editorial processes, and payment for the open access. The publishing group was also listed by Jeffrey Beall in his controversial blog and was cited as a predatory publishing group. Of course, the OMICS group took action, threatens Mr. Beall (see: Publisher Threatens to Sue Blogger for $1-Billion, The Chronicle of Higher Education, http://www.chronicle.com/article/Publisher-Threatens-to-Sue/139243/?cid=at) and stood firmly that their publication process is valid, credible and reliable. Just go over the internet and you’ll see a lot of stories.

The group is also known for their Conferenceseries scheme. This is actually a conference schema which can be found in all countries, like literally everywhere, where “experts” meet, share and exchange knowledge on their specific field of specialization. The subject area is also broad, which ranges from health to basic sciences and applied to pure sciences.

Personally, I was invited (through a personal message on FACEBOOK! How formal) by OMICS-Conferenceseries to present my research as a DISTINGUISHED SPEAKER, at the Microbial Ecology Conference (was somewhere in the USA). SOUNDS COOL. Unfortunately, they are asking me to pay a thousand or so USD for my accommodation, and they are also giving me options on how to pay my registration and hotel. Immediately, I declined the offer since I heard serious odd stories about this group. Then after several days, the contact person asked me if I could do a Video conference presentation, amounting to several hundred or so USD and they are also willing to publish an extended abstract of my presentation. SOUNDS COOL, again. But still, I said, Sorry.

Since there’s huge buzz about this group, I wrote an ABSTRACT and send it to 5 different Conferenceseries of OMICS. — Integrative Biology 2018, World Microbiologist 2017, Applied Microbiology, Genomics 2018, and Mycology. And guess what, I received 4 acceptance letters!

The very scientific abstract

For the title of the submitted abstract, it goes something like this: The response of Aspergillus trichodermus sp. nov., a novel basidiome from the protistan-myxo-metal redoxifying clade: A phylogenomics approach towards next generation sanger sequencing (NGSS). Seems scientific, but it’s not and the title is totally wrong on all levels!

My thought: It seems to me that they don’t have a reviewer. A REAL reviewer in the field of phylogenomics or systematics can easily spot errors in the presented title! Phrases like “Aspergillus trichodermus sp. nov., a novel basidiome” is wrong, and “next generation sanger sequencing (NGSS)” is also wrong.

Authors: I had a great choice of authors for the submitted abstract, and they are: Linnaea L. Borealis, Kurt Cobain, and Tarja Turunen. Linnaea L. Borealis, Linnaea borealis is a flowering plant, commonly referred as Twinflower! Next is Kurt Cobain, the singer of Nirvana and lastly, Tarja Turunen, former lead vocalist of Nightwish. And also, I just made up the University affiliation (Department of Applied and Environmental Microbiology, Institute of Mycology, University of the Northwestern Philippines). As a description of the primary author: I described Linnaea as “a graduate of Ph.D. in Applied Environmental Chemistry from the University of the Northwestern Philippines, another Ph.D. degree was conferred to Linnaea, and that is the Ph.D. in Bioinformatics with specialization in Evolutionary Biology. Linnaea teaches applied chemistry, basic biology, culture and sports, and introductory bioinformatics to pedagogy, biology, nursing and philosophy students.”

My thought: Probably they are not familiar with the name Kurt Cobain or Tarja Turunen. With Linnaea borealis, I still don’t know with them.

And for my Abstarct, below is the content I submitted:

This research paper presents the first systematic description of an ascomycete, herewith referred to as the novel, Aspergillus trichodermus species nova, Eurotiaceae, Hypocreales, Ustilagomycotina. The species is phenotypically conspecific to any known Aspergillus and is found to be the anamorph of Trichoderma, thus the species epithet, trichodermus. The novel species was able to reduce and oxidize various heavy metals (e.g. chromium, nickel, molybdenum, lead, mercury, rhudibium, palladium, iron, helium, mercury, manganese, magnesium, carbon, lithium), salts (carbonate, sulfate, oxalate, mannates), organic compounds (ethylene diaminetetraceatic acid, sulfur metalloporphyrins, toluene-complexed carbazide), and other recalcitrant compounds and persistent micro- fusible antibiotics (penicillin, amoxicillin, tetracycline, chloramphenicine, and other amine medicines). The phylogeny was reconstituted among the protistan-myxo-metal redoxying clade as a new and novel clade of ascomycetes, basidiomycetes, and their close allies, i.e. myxomycota, oomycota and the large complex of obligately plant pathogenic labyrinthulomycota. Obtained data were generated using the next generation Sanger sequencing of meta barcodes and eDNA using Perl pipe lines, R script-based next generation phylogenetics and sequence capture based hybridization of RNA-DNA complex. This paper will establish a revolutionary approach on phylogeny and will propose changes on the systematics of eukaryotes, and prokaryotes.

My thought: As you can see, the abstract is catastrophic, doesn’t make any sense at all, phrasing is chaotic, and scientific terminologies are totally wrong! By the way, they require putting a figure to accompany the abstract. Interesting, right? What I did was, I just copied it from somebody else’s work, (with the help of google, of course), paste it on my abstract, edited the font size and style, and that’s it! It was accepted! Had there been a real and rigorous peer review, these things could have been spotted easily. Further, they did not even bother to check whether the presented abstract is copied from somebody else’s work.

After acceptance, here comes the fee…

Yes, so finally after acceptance of the abstract, they will now present to you the registration and payment scheme. In my case, they suggested the following:

Registration only: 699 USD,

Package A (Registration + 2 nights accommodation): 1179 USD

Package B (Reg + 3 nights accommodation): 1339 USD

Now, you decide.

Final thoughts

Of course, we want to share our findings with the scientific community (poster or oral presentation). Similarly, we wanted to learn something from our scientific community as well. This is the real fun part of scientific learning: SHARING! However, we should be vigilant and aware that the conference we are attending to is reliable, credible and valid.

To verify such things, it would be best to 1) Check the track record of the organization sponsoring the conference (e.g. who are the organizers and where are they affiliated? where will it be held? what about the previous conferences they had?). Sometimes, some organizations will place names of famous scientists; I guess it will not be bad if you are going to send an email to that person (or to a group of people) if you’re in doubt of course. 2) Ask your colleagues, if, for instance, they know something about the conference/organization where you wanted to present your research. 3) Check the website of the organization that will sponsor a conference. Sometimes, the catch is that they will place too many big names in a certain field of science (this will definitely attract you!), and will also indicate some never-heard crooked high IF values (for their journals and conference proceedings) and research institutes on their website. But still, the way they present their conference web page is poor. 4) If the contact person keeps on sending invitations (emails or facebook messages), then telling you that you’re invited as a distinguished speaker. This is doubtful already. 5) If the contact person opens up the registration fees quite easily, then doubt.

This problem is pandemic and we should be vigilant!

Below are the screen caps of the acceptance letters

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