Invitation to be an Honorable speaker, but perhaps at a dishonourable conference?
Keith S. Taber
Dear ***** ***** (Program Coordinator: 'Chemistry Education 2021')
Thank you for the invitation on behalf of the organising committee, to be the Honorable Speaker at your upcoming 4th International Conference on Chemistry Education and Research, and for sending me the link so I could check out the details of the conference. Thank you, also, for suggesting that I share my thoughts on the conference. As someone who has become quite concerned about academic standards, and, in particular, how new academics find their way in the current chaotic scholarly environment, I am happy to do that.
Given the excessive number of invitations I receive to write or edit or talk in areas where I clearly have no expertise, it was reassuring to be invited to talk on a conference that, on the face of it at least, is related to my own area of research.
Despite this I feel I must decline the invitation for a number of reasons.
A very practical reason is that you have invited me to talk at less than four weeks' notice. When I do present, I take this responsibility rather seriously, and would want to plan and prepare a talk carefully. Whilst it is not impossible to produce something of quality on a short time-scale, I have various existing commitments that would need to be put to one side to concentrate on preparing a talk on such a time-scale. I would need a very good reason to do that – and so would need to feel this was indeed an important place to present.
In that regard, you tell me this is a "prestigious" conference, but I am not convinced. This is not just because I feel I am familiar with the prestigious conferences in my area of work, and this is not one of them. This is also based on the evidence available in response to the kinds of questions I advise research students and new researchers to consider when evaluating conferences they might consider committing their time to attending.
The first point is that this conference seems to be organised by a commercial company, 'Conferenceseries LLC Ltd'. Whilst it is certainly not impossible for a serious and worthwhile conference to be convened by such an organisation, the more prestigious conferences are usually organised by professional societies and learned bodies and research associations in specific fields and disciplines. Your site refers to having "support from 1000 more scientific societies" which sounds at once both impressive, and yet vague. The link you give lists organisations publishing with 'OMICS International' – so is that another name for the same organisation?
More substantively, you refer to the invitation being from the organising committee. When I taught research methods sessions on presenting research I would recommend that students interrogated the membership lists of scientific or organising committees of conferences they were unsure about. Do they include well-known academics in the field – people who they are confident are leading names in the area and who suggest the conference has sufficient prestige to commit valuable time (and often money) to a meeting? I cannot find the list of the committee on the website. It does not seem to be there, suggesting you do not have a list of top people in the field prepared to be publicly associated with this conference. (If the listing is there and I have missed it, I would appreciate being directed to it.) This is often a sign of a predatory conference (that is one whose primary purpose is making money for its sponsors, not furthering knowledge.)
This impression is reinforced by details of the conference programme itself.
For one thing there is some ambiguity about the conference name and theme – something I associate with predatory conferences which are not managed and organised by experts in a field. How is 'Chemistry Education and Research' to be parsed? (n.b. "It is also an opportunity for researchers, chemistry professors, students to present and discuss the most recent advances and challenges on Chemistry Education and Chemistry Research.") The conference details are listed under the subheading 'CHEMISTRY EDUCATION 2021', and the first track is 'Chemistry Education' – but there are 21 other tracks which seem to be about other aspects of the chemical sciences, not education.
Under the first track, 'Chemistry Education' a number of specific 'sub-tracks' are listed:
Track 1-1 Developing theories Science and math ability
Track 1-2 Conduct research Perseverance
Track 1-3 Attending to data Analytical skills
Track 1-4 Curiosity Follow through skills
Track 1-5 Utilizing formulas Perform experiments
Track 1-6 Process data Observation and decision making
Track 1-7 Work independently and in groups Technological skills
Track 1-8 Oral and written communication Remain objective
I find it very difficult to believe that any experts in chemistry education would have devised that set of convoluted and incoherent themes for conference sessions. It reads more like a list that has been put together by a child asked to undertake an internet search in a subject that they have never studied. Presumably there are 16 items here which have been inadvertently paired-up on no particular basis. Indeed this list seems to appear, with exactly the same flaw, at the website of an American University where it is described as "interests and values … related to Chemistry Education". Surely your organisation has not simply copied and pasted from another website without anyone checking to see that that an already questionable list of features of undergraduate chemistry had lost half of its bullets?
To return to your association with formal learned societies, I see you list an apparently impressive collection of international societies under the Chemistry Education track: – including the Royal Society of Chemistry (of which I am a Fellow, so I know it is not based in Belgium as your site suggests).
- European Chemical Sciences
- Society of Austrian Chemists
- Royal Society of Chemistry
- Chemical Society of France
- Society of German Scientists
- Association of Greek Chemists
- Association of Hungarian Chemists
- Italian Chemical Society
- Polish Chemical Society
- Portuguese Society of Chemistry
- Slovak Chemical Society
- Swedish Chemical Society
- Swiss Chemical Society
- Royal Dutch Chemical Society
- Norwegian Chemical Society
- American Chemical Society
- American Institute of Chemists
- American Institute of Chemical Engineers
- Association of Analytical Communities
- Canadian Society for Chemical Technology
- Chemical Society of Japan
- Chemical Research Society of India
- Japan Association for International Chemical Information
- Korean Chemical Society
- The Chemical Society of Thailand
The implication would seem to be that these societies from around the world have some formal association with the conference and are, if not supporting it as such, at least offering it some credence by allowing their names to be used in this way. But I wonder if that would be correct?
Your site does not actually specify ANY formal linkage at this point – it just presents a list under the subheading 'Societies'. I therefore assume that although you would like it to be read as a form of accreditation or recommendation of your conference by relevant organisations, it is actually no such thing – rather the list should be read simply as societies whose members you would hope might be interested in your conference. Am I wrong?
In all then, I am unable to find any indicators here of the "prestigious" conference you suggest. Rather I see an inept and incoherent presentation that does not seem to have been developed or informed by experts in the field. Indeed, there are several signs that commonly indicate the kind of predatory conference that is designed to take money from delegates who are misled into signing up for something that has a veneer of academic respect, or who choose to share in the pretence as they wish to expand their own c.v./résumés with conference presentations (and perhaps cannot get their papers accepted at well-respected conferences) and so enter into the conceit and collude with the organisers to mislead others who may assume from the title that this is indeed a prestigious academic conference.
You will appreciate that in the circumstances I would not wish to attend your conference as an honorable (or even honoured) speaker, both as in my evaluation this would not be a good use of my time, and as my involvement could be used to mislead other more junior colleagues in the field to assume this was a conference they should consider investing in and attending themselves.
Best wishes
