This guy claims to have earned his DBA from Cambridge University.

There are people from major institutions from around the world on the prgram committee:
http://www.iiis2009.org/wmsci/website/ProgramCommitte.asp?vc=1

 

If this thing is bogus it is one of the most public, wide reaching conspiracies ever. I had 6 people review my paper, and got a lot of feedback, in writing, concerning style and content, to include challenging my methodology.

I also had the opportunity to review all other papers submitted in my category, and challenge anything I did not feel was appropriate.

It may be true that they accept a lot of papers to get a lot of presenters to get a lot of attendance, and it may not be the MIT Review (or whatever a top tier publication in this space would be), but is publishing and presenting an article here really comparable to buying a fake degree from a diploma mill?

 

David,

It depends, if you are getting funding to go, I wouldn't consider it a problem. You are going to Florida, socialize a bit and you are getting paid for it so why not use the money (As a matter of fact, the is the main market of this conference, professors that have the budget but don't want to sweat for the publication). Even if you add it to your resume, it wouldn't hurt much if it is included with many other conferences.

If you are paying from your own pocket and you think that this conference might boost your resume, the reality is that it wouldn't have much impact. You are right, I wouldn't consider it as having a diploma mill in your resume as it is a legit conference but wouldn't get you a lot of respect either.

If you are going to invest money in IS conferences that can get you a bit of respect, I would suggest subscribing to the association of IS (http://home.aisnet.org/associations/7499/files/Index_Markup.cfm). They keep track of the rating of the different journals in IS and also promote more academic oriented conferences.

 

All the conferences are peer reviewed, it is the acceptance rate that makes them legit. A good conference has a 5-15% acceptance rate.This is not the only fake conference, there are quite a few. Here is an article that talks about the fake conference problem:
"
WMSCI has listed close to 300 research topics as
relevant in its Call-For-Paper (CFP), and reportedly
accepted 2,165 and 2,904 papers in 2003 and 2004,
respectively"
http://pike.psu.edu/presentations/oracle.pdf

 

The Oxford Round Table conference is also considered a bogus conference yet many professors go to it each year. The feedback tends to be that once there, it really isn't that scholarly. This is probably similar. The ORT has nothing to do with Oxford, btw. They just happen to rent facilities from them and people think it's hosted by Oxford.

I think my original comments were too harsh. It probably isn't a complete scam nor is it a mill but it certainly isn't one of the conferences that have any sort of prestige. People have strong opinions on it (some think it's OK, some think it's crap). I was trying get across that you might want to think about situations in the future when someone who thinks it's crap runs across your name on the paper or sees it on your CV. If you don't think it's going to matter much (if you work in industry as opposed to academia) then I wouldn't worry about it.

It's considered a "spam" conference because they send out form invites to people in all sorts of fields from humanities to science asking them to submit papers to the conference, including those that are so far out of the field the conference claims to be targeting.

 

Hmmm, this is all very interesting stuff. It never occurred to me that academics we so good at cheating each other. I live 45 minutes from Orlando, which is one of the reasons I didn’t mind submitting to this conference. One of the challenges I find in academics is that there is this desire for higher order rudiments, to the point that on some level there is no answer save one answer that is very expensive, of the highest caliber, and only available to a select few. DETC isn’t good need RA. RA really isn’t good unless it is AACSB. Conference A accepts many papers, sure, they are peer reviewed, but it is a scam because there are better conferences.

I just wanted to check the box that I’ve published (sounds like I picked the right one from that standpoint . If I had known, I probably would have submitted to a different journal. In all honesty, I’m not out for fame or prestige. I really already have it. I’m not Bill Gates, but neither is Bill Gates any more. I’m going to keep writing articles, and I’m glad I have the list of questionable venues now, but I think we are too quick to have this line that everything is a scam except this one thing over here because of how exclusive they are and see everyone says.

But I’m just rambling. I do appreciate the information.

 

Welcome to my world, Academics are snobs and the source of the PhD and publications are the two things they look at when evaluating candidates. I have been denied two times positions at research schools because my publications are not from top journals. Conferences are normally ignored unless they come from reputable places.

It was too much for me, there are always more accomplished people that spend 3 to 4 years doing post docs and accumulate better publications. In my experience, you either finish a PhD on a subject of high demand (e.g. Accounting, Finance) and are hired because lack of competition of you keep playing the game of post docs that just allow you to accumulate more junk that can make your more competitive. Many people are 50 by the time they get their fist full time gig.

I currently teach at a CC and part time at the University, I don't have the stress to publish and just do it for fun. I think the warning was just in case you didn't know about these junk conferences. They are harmless but have almost no academic value so having them is almost like not having them at all.

 

I did not know about them, so it is good now that I know. I decided to step out of the rat race and work for myself. Part of that plan is doing scholarly things, but as you say for myself not because I am trying to impress anyone. There are a few topics that I am legitimately interested in, and want to research. I still make my money consulting, although I’ve got a company I just launched that has some good leading edge technology we are in the process of bringing to the market. In fact, I am on the road right now taking an executive course at MIT, and then I stop in DC for two days meeting with several potential partners, and the Department of Energy to talk about adding some technology to a contract they awarded us last year.

I do find the class structure in academics constantly surprising, but, since I am new to it professionally I’ll probably keep making some rookie mistakes.

Good for you on your choice of a CC, I personally think that is where a lot of good work can go on. I am much more interested in helping people that need it than MIT snobs that write fake paper writing software. What a waste of talent.

 

David,

Although top journals and conferences might be required for full time positions, they are less critical for online adjunct positions. I kept the resume of Dr. Babbs, she has most of her publications from non peer reviewed sources or conferences and yet managed to be hired as a dissertation advisor for many online schools. She is very good at selling herself and you can look at her resume as a good example of how to inflate your work. She has some unreferenced publications in her resume and publication from junk online magazines. SHe knows that most online hiring managers don't know how to differentiate a good publication so she just makes it look bulky. This is one reason why so many junk conferences in business as they work for some people like Dr. Babbs.

 

Sorry, the file is too long to be posted.

 

Yes, this is an intriguing topic -- and very much analogous, to my thinking, to another issue that troubles me.

There is a quite large academic publisher out there, which advertises regularly in major publications seeking manuscripts, but began as the vanity publishing arm of a long-established diploma mill. The mill is now closed, but the publishing enterprise continues, with, of course, no mention of the "university" it was originally named after. They appear to be publishing a lot of serious and worthy books by established academics, who probably know nothing of the history of the business.

So what should/would one say to a author on the verge of submitting his/her manuscript to this place? Has it reached the tipping point where it is now so respectable that its past is irrelevant? Or is it a time bomb waiting to explode if some investigative reporter decides it is worth a look?

It has crossed my mind to produce a machine-generated randomized book-length manuscript to this publisher, and see what their acceptance committee does. Probably more work than I have time for or interest in.

 

RF-At one time she was the only available Chair at NCU in my topic when I was trying to find the Chair for my dissertation. I literally thought about it for weeks, and ultimately raised a stink and got a Chair from another department, who turned out to be awesome. The lead position on the committee is paramount to your success. This was before I even knew about the different quality of conferences.

Dr. Bear-As you can see I am new to all this, but my gut tells me there is a difference between a publisher and a fake school. After all, a school is fake because there is no way to know how much rigor is present in the curriculum. However, with a publication (even including the article I am apparently publishing in a minimalist journal) anyone can go read it and form his or her own opinion.

I will post my article where it is easily accessible this weekend, I am very happy with it. We did some real quantitative math on some survey results that painted an interesting picture.

How FUN this all is!

 

... well, except for Lord Levicoff's two-year PhD in Religion & Law at Union Institute.

 

I disagree. Science is self-policing enterprise, so what they did was valuable, not unlike Dr. Gollin's pigeon experiments with St. Regis.

 

I’m sorry you don’t think focusing your talents on helping others is a good investment of your time. I believe it is of mine.

 

And, to you, exposing a spamming fraud is not helping? The same spamming fraud that took your own money? Then Dr. Gollin shouldn't have bothered exposing St. Regis "U", I guess.

BTW: I doubt any of them spent more than a week or two of their time to this project. The software is brilliant, but there is nothing scientifically new in context-free grammars. And, it already served to clean up policies in a real (and expensive) journal, as well as to fight outright fraud and corruption in Russian doctoral process. Pretty good for a hobby project.

 

Ay Travieso!


Abner

 

It depends. A lot depends on their current editorial policies: do they do a real peer review? In any case, if an academic is on a tenure track, it is advisable to look elsewhere. For an established researcher, it may be fine.

As with schools, there is a continuum of respectability. Visit the Chronicle forum: they devote a lot of time discussing academic publishers some consider "sub par". And those are generally above-the-board commercial houses with at least some screening in place, who did publish a fair amount of worthy material! And there are, of course, outright vanity publishers (that can serve some needs. I'm thinking about giving my dissertation to "Verlag Dr. Mueller", just to get a free "author's copy"), vanity conferences (Oxford Round Table) and, of course, the radioactive WMSCI, with enough bad press to sink a Titanic. I must admit I have at least one publication with a somewhat mysterious European online conference that sometimes appear on fakes lists. I think they don't hold it anymore.

 

Meh. I’m not biting today.