World Academy of Science, Engineering and Technology
Status | Active |
---|---|
Founder | Cemal Ardil |
Country of origin | Turkey |
Distribution | Worldwide |
Publication types | Open access journals |
Nonfiction topics | Science, technology, and medicine |
Official website |
www |
The World Academy of Science, Engineering and Technology or WASET is a publisher of a number of open access journals on a wide variety of scientific and technical subjects.[1] The publisher has been listed as a "potential, possible, or probable" predatory publisher by Jeffrey Beall[2][3] and is listed as such by the Max Planck Society.[4]
Conferences
WASET has been accused of arranging predatory conferences, in order to artificially boost the academic credentials of presenters and paper submitters.[5][6][7] It claims to organize several thousands of scientific conferences a year, using names that are the same or similar to real conferences organized by established scientific groups.[1][8][9] Legitimate conferences have publicly warned of identically named, fake WASET conferences.[10][11] In 2015, the University of Toronto released a "scam advisory" about a purported conference on their premises advertised by WASET.[12][13] In 2018 WASET is advertising 49,844 conferences, many of which share similar names.[14] Hundreds of conferences may be scheduled for the same location on the same day.[15] For example, 116 simultaneous scientific meetings were scheduled in a hotel in Rio de Janeiro in February 2016.[16][17]
The conferences are low-quality, described in one case as a "Potemkin village"[18] and anyone can present a paper by simply paying the registration fee.[19] Conferences are planned many years in advance.[17] The website includes a section on "Featured Locations" featuring photos of popular tourist destinations.[20] Names of researchers have been included as conference committee members, without their knowledge or consent.[16][21]
One of their journals, the International Journal of Medical, Pharmaceutical, Biological, and Life Sciences, accepted an obviously fake article in a sting operation.[22]
Organization
WASET is based in Turkey and is registered in Azerbaijan.[23] Its domain name was registered 2007 with a contact address in Dubai.[24] It is run by Cemal Ardil, a former science teacher, with assistance from his daughter Ebru and his son Bora.[25] Cemal Ardil is also the person who has published the most articles on the WASET website.[26] Before taking on the name WASET, the organization was known under the name of "Enformatika".[27][26][28]
Journal indexing
Journals are indexed in WASET's "International Science Index", not to be confused with the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) index, i.e. the Web of Science.[15] WASET journals were indexed by Scopus and listed in the SCImago Journal Rank from 2009 until 2011, when the coverage was cancelled.[29] They were furthermore included in Qualis, an official Brazilian system for classifying scientific literature, which guides researchers in choosing journals for publication. This inclusion was called a "serious failure" by scientists interviewed by Folha de S.Paulo, a Brazilian daily newspaper.[16]
Media attention
Except for a Science publication in 2013[22] and Jeffrey Beall's List, the academic community had been little concerned with WASET.
In mid-July 2018, a research team of journalists including Süddeutsche Zeitung, ARD, ORF, BR, Falter and Le Monde published articles on unscientific and predatory publishers, including WASET and OMICS.[30][31][32]
References
- 1 2 Beall, Jeffrey (2014-08-28). "Predatory Publisher Organizes Conference Using Same Name as Legitimate Conference". Scholarly Open Access. Archived from the original on 2016-05-03. Retrieved 2015-02-03.
- ↑ Beall, Jeffrey (2016-12-31). "Beall's List: Potential, possible, or probable predatory scholarly open-access publishers". Scholarly Open Access. Archived from the original on 2017-01-03. Retrieved 2017-01-03.
- ↑ "List of Predatory Publishers". Stop Predatory Journals. Retrieved 2018-08-01.
- ↑ "Qualitätssicherung in der Wissenschaft". Max-Planck-Gesellschaft (in German). Max Planck Society. 2018-07-20. Archived from the original on 2018-07-24. Retrieved 2018-07-24.
- ↑ Beall, Jeffrey (2015-10-06). "More Duplication of Journal Titles and Conference Names by Predatory Publishers". Scholarly Open Access. Archived from the original on 2016-12-24. Retrieved 2016-10-22.
- ↑ Spiewak, Martin (2017-10-25). "Wissenschaftskonferenzen: Tagen im Zwielicht". Die Zeit (in German). Retrieved 2017-11-06.
- ↑ Spears, Tom (2017-03-10). "When pigs fly: Fake science conferences abound for fraud and profit". Ottawa Citizen. Retrieved 2017-11-08.
- ↑ "WASET Bogus and Fake Conferences". fakeconferences.blogspot.com. 2014-02-02. Archived from the original on 2015-04-30. Retrieved 2017-07-04.
- ↑ De Boer, Richard (2015-07-04). "Academische nepcongressen blijken lucratieve groeimarkt" [Academic fake conventions turn out to be lucrative growth markets]. de Volkskrant (in Dutch). Retrieved 2018-07-30.
- ↑ "Beware of fake conferences". 26th International Conference on Artificial Neural Networks (ICANN). 2016-11-11. Archived from the original on 2017-07-04. Retrieved 2017-07-04.
- ↑ "ICP12 2016 in Utrecht!". 12th International Conference on Paleoceanography (ICP12). 2015. Archived from the original on 2016-09-14. Retrieved 2017-07-04.
- ↑ McCrostie, James (2016-05-11). "'Predatory conferences' stalk Japan's groves of academia". The Japan Times. Retrieved 2017-11-06.
- ↑ "Fake Conference Advertisement". University of Toronto, Information Technology Services. Retrieved 2017-11-06.
- ↑ "List of WASET Conferences for 2018". WASET Watch. Retrieved 2018-07-30.
- 1 2 Weber-Wulff, Debora (2015-04-04). "Brazilian Government recommends mock conference". Copy, Shake, and Paste: A blog about plagiarism and scientific misconduct. Archived from the original on 2017-07-05. Retrieved 2017-07-04.
- 1 2 3 Tuffani, Mauricio (2015-03-03). "Eventos científicos "caça-níqueis" preocupam cientistas brasileiros" [‘Slot Machines’ Scientific Events Worry Brazilian Scientists]. Folha de S.Paulo (in Portuguese). Retrieved 2018-07-30. Lay summary (2015-04-02).
- 1 2 Grove, Jack (2017-10-26). "Predatory conferences 'now outnumber official scholarly events'". Times Higher Education (THE). Archived from the original on 2017-11-08. Retrieved 2017-11-06.
- ↑ Kolata, Gina (2017-10-30). "Many Academics Are Eager to Publish in Worthless Journals". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2017-11-06.
- ↑ Spears, Tom (2014-10-08). "Science fiction? Why the long-cherished peer-review system is under attack". Ottawa Citizen. Retrieved 2015-02-03.
- ↑ Malboeuf, Marie-Claude (2017-09-20). "Fraudes: fausses revues scientifiques, faux congrès" [Fraud: fake scientific journals, fake congresses]. La Presse (Canadian newspaper) (in French). Retrieved 2018-07-31.
- ↑ White, Andrew (2016-04-11). "Junk conference warning". University of Queensland, School of Mathematics and Physics, QT Lab. Archived from the original on 2017-03-30. Retrieved 2017-07-04.
- 1 2 Bohannon, John (2013-10-04). "Who's Afraid of Peer Review?". Science. 342 (6154): 60–65. doi:10.1126/science.342.6154.60. ISSN 0036-8075. PMID 24092725.
- ↑ "Azerbaijani "academy" fools a lot of scientists from around the world". Panorama. 2014-06-24. Retrieved 2015-02-03.
- ↑ "waset.org". Whois: Identity for everyone. Retrieved 2017-07-06.
- ↑ Oberhaus, Daniel (2018-08-14). "Hundreds of Researchers From Harvard, Yale and Stanford Were Published in Fake Academic Journals". Motherboard. Retrieved 2018-08-14.
- 1 2 Kaplan, Sefa (2010-12-12). "Parayı bastıranı profesör yapıyorlar" [He who plunks down money gets made professor]. Hürriyet (in Turkish). Archived from the original on 2018-07-30. Retrieved 2015-02-03. Lay summary – Copy, Shake, and Paste: A blog about plagiarism and scientific misconduct (2012-06-17).
- ↑ Gang, Erman (2016-04-01). "'Bilimsel şarlatanlığa' AKP koruması". SoL (in Turkish). Archived from the original on 2017-12-16. Retrieved 2018-07-30.
- ↑ "ENFORMATIKA: World Academy of Science, Engineering and Technology". Defunct website of Enformatika. 2007-03-29. Archived from the original on 2007-03-29.
- ↑ "World Academy of Science, Engineering and Technology". SCImago Journal Rank. Archived from the original on 2017-07-06. Retrieved 2017-07-06.
- ↑ Hornung, Peter; Klühspies, Anna; Mader, Fabian; Tillack, Anna (2018-07-19). "Pseudo-Verlage – Eine Bedrohung für die Wissenschaft" [Pseudo-Publishers – A Threat to Science]. Bayerischer Rundfunk (in German). Retrieved 2018-08-01.
- ↑ "Mainzer Wissenschaftler von weltweitem Skandal betroffen" [Mainz scientists affected by worldwide scandal]. Südwestrundfunk (in German). 2018-07-19. Retrieved 2018-08-01.
- ↑ Eckert, Svea; Hornung, Peter (2018-07-19). "So einfach wurden wir Wissenschaftler" [This is how easily we became scientists]. Norddeutscher Rundfunk (in German). Retrieved 2018-08-01.