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 predatory publisher of open access academic journals. The publisher has been listed as a "potential, possible, or probable" predatory publisher by American library scientist Jeffrey Beall [1] and is listed as such by the Max Planck Society [2] and Stop Predatory Journals. [3] WASET's estimated annual revenue in 2017 alone was over $4 million, [4] [5] with other estimates ranging from $8.9 million to $11.9 million for the years 2014 to 2019 combined. [6]
WASET has been accused of arranging predatory conferences, in order to artificially boost the academic credentials of presenters and paper submitters. [7] [8] 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. [9] [10] WASET also appears to operate the website "Conference Index", which claims to be a database of international conferences but only lists events from WASET. [11]
Legitimate conferences have publicly warned of identically named, fake WASET conferences. [12] [13] In 2015, the University of Toronto released a "scam advisory" about a purported conference on their premises advertised by WASET. [14] [15] In 2018 WASET advertised 49,844 conferences, many of which share similar names. [16] Hundreds of conferences may be scheduled for the same location on the same day. [17] [18] For example, 116 simultaneous scientific meetings were scheduled in a hotel in Rio de Janeiro in February 2016. [19] [20]
The conferences are low-quality, described in one case as a " Potemkin village" [21] and anyone can present a paper by simply paying the registration fee. [22] Conferences are planned many years in advance. [20] The website includes a section on "Featured Locations" featuring photos of popular tourist destinations. [23] Names of researchers have been included as conference committee members, without their knowledge or consent. [19] [24]
WASET is based in Turkey and is registered in Azerbaijan. [25] Its domain name was registered 2007 with a contact address in Dubai. [26] It is run by Cemal Ardil, a former science teacher, with assistance from his daughter Ebru and his son Bora. [5] Cemal Ardil is also the person who has published the most articles on the WASET website. [27] [28] Before taking on the name WASET, the organization was known under the name of "Enformatika". [27] [28] [29] [30]
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. [17] WASET journals were indexed by Scopus and listed in the SCImago Journal Rank from 2009 until 2011, when the coverage was cancelled. [31] 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. [19]
In 2013 one of WASET's journals, the International Journal of Medical, Pharmaceutical, Biological, and Life Sciences, accepted an obviously fake article in a sting operation by John Bohannon. The resulting article and data were published in Science. [32]
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. [33] [34] [35] The group of journalists presented their findings at the 2018 DEF CON 26 conference in a talk entitled "Inside the Fake Science Factory". [36] [37] [4] They detail how a WASET conference works, show how they gave a presentation on a ludicrous paper (generated using SCIgen [38]) to the gathered academics, and how they confronted the single person organizing the conference. The journalists state that their "findings highlight the prevalence of the pseudo-academic conferences, journals and publications and the damage they can and are doing to society". [36]
netted the Ardils an estimated $4.1 million in 2017 alone
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 predatory publisher of open access academic journals. The publisher has been listed as a "potential, possible, or probable" predatory publisher by American library scientist Jeffrey Beall [1] and is listed as such by the Max Planck Society [2] and Stop Predatory Journals. [3] WASET's estimated annual revenue in 2017 alone was over $4 million, [4] [5] with other estimates ranging from $8.9 million to $11.9 million for the years 2014 to 2019 combined. [6]
WASET has been accused of arranging predatory conferences, in order to artificially boost the academic credentials of presenters and paper submitters. [7] [8] 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. [9] [10] WASET also appears to operate the website "Conference Index", which claims to be a database of international conferences but only lists events from WASET. [11]
Legitimate conferences have publicly warned of identically named, fake WASET conferences. [12] [13] In 2015, the University of Toronto released a "scam advisory" about a purported conference on their premises advertised by WASET. [14] [15] In 2018 WASET advertised 49,844 conferences, many of which share similar names. [16] Hundreds of conferences may be scheduled for the same location on the same day. [17] [18] For example, 116 simultaneous scientific meetings were scheduled in a hotel in Rio de Janeiro in February 2016. [19] [20]
The conferences are low-quality, described in one case as a " Potemkin village" [21] and anyone can present a paper by simply paying the registration fee. [22] Conferences are planned many years in advance. [20] The website includes a section on "Featured Locations" featuring photos of popular tourist destinations. [23] Names of researchers have been included as conference committee members, without their knowledge or consent. [19] [24]
WASET is based in Turkey and is registered in Azerbaijan. [25] Its domain name was registered 2007 with a contact address in Dubai. [26] It is run by Cemal Ardil, a former science teacher, with assistance from his daughter Ebru and his son Bora. [5] Cemal Ardil is also the person who has published the most articles on the WASET website. [27] [28] Before taking on the name WASET, the organization was known under the name of "Enformatika". [27] [28] [29] [30]
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. [17] WASET journals were indexed by Scopus and listed in the SCImago Journal Rank from 2009 until 2011, when the coverage was cancelled. [31] 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. [19]
In 2013 one of WASET's journals, the International Journal of Medical, Pharmaceutical, Biological, and Life Sciences, accepted an obviously fake article in a sting operation by John Bohannon. The resulting article and data were published in Science. [32]
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. [33] [34] [35] The group of journalists presented their findings at the 2018 DEF CON 26 conference in a talk entitled "Inside the Fake Science Factory". [36] [37] [4] They detail how a WASET conference works, show how they gave a presentation on a ludicrous paper (generated using SCIgen [38]) to the gathered academics, and how they confronted the single person organizing the conference. The journalists state that their "findings highlight the prevalence of the pseudo-academic conferences, journals and publications and the damage they can and are doing to society". [36]
netted the Ardils an estimated $4.1 million in 2017 alone