Fake Conferences
This is how convincing fake conference announcement can be:
“ Conference series takes pleasure in inviting the scientific community across the globe to attend the 4th World Congress and Exhibition on Antibiotics and Antibiotic Resistance during June 14- 15, 2018 at Barcelona, Spain with a motto to Explore Innovations in Antibiotics, Antibiotic Resistance.
The gathering will address Advancements in Antibiotics in the area of medical use, while laying emphasis on innovative methodologies in pharmaceutical and manufacturing. Antibiotics 2018 will be the best venue for Doctors, Research Associate, Research Scientist, Directors, CEO’s of Pharmaceutical Organizations, Drug Manufacturers, Regulatory Affairs Associate, Health professionals, Scholars from Pharmaceutical and medical backgrounds, Quality Control Analyst, Quality Assurance Specialist, Market research Analyst, Associate Product Manager, Product Manager, Strategy Director, Business Development Manager, Pharmacists, Deans, Students, Professors, Researchers, and Faculty of Medical and Pharmaceutical Sciences from Universities and colleges.”
This a typical press release of of predatory publishing group OMICS.
We already have fake news and fake market research. The events promoted by OMICS Group represent a genre of fake events.
Here is what Wikipedia says about OMICS — “OMICS Publishing Group is a publisher of open access journals that is widely regarded as predatory.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OMICS_Publishing_Group
More about predatory publisher OMICS from FTC site:
“The Federal Trade Commission has charged the publisher of hundreds of purported online academic journals with deceiving academics and researchers about the nature of its publications and hiding publication fees ranging from hundreds to thousands of dollars.
The FTC’s complaint alleges that OMICS Group, Inc., along with two affiliated companies and their president and director, Srinubabu Gedela, claim that their journals follow rigorous peer-review practices and have editorial boards made up of prominent academics. In reality, many articles are published with little to no peer review and numerous individuals represented to be editors have not agreed to be affiliated with the journals.”
https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press-releases/2016/08/ftc-charges-academic-journal-publisher-omics-group-deceived
Patterns of Predation from Wired:
“OMICS victims are mostly young researchers, new to the scholarly publishing world.”
https://www.wired.com/2016/09/ftc-cracking-predatory-science-journals/
More about fake events fro Huffington Post:
“In this post, we hope to raise awareness about the growing menace of bogus conferences, organized by predatory publishers as well as specialized conference groups such as BIT Congress Inc, Conference Series Ltd, Event Series (both owned by OMICS International), PSC Conference and many others. These groups, often based out of China and India, run vanity conferences on nearly every conceivable topic.”
http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/dr-madhukar-pai/predatory-conferences-academia_b_12467834.html
