To Decline or Accept: A Guide for Determining the Legitimacy of Academic Conference Invitations

Importance After the rise of predatory journals characterized by false claims of legitimacy and a pay-to-publish model, similar “predatory conferences” have become increasingly common. The email inbox of an academic physician can be filled with daily announcements encouraging conference attendance, abstract submission, and often panel or keynote speaker invitations. It therefore becomes important for the plastic surgeon to be able to discern whether these invitations are from “predatory” conferences or legitimate career advancement opportunities, especially early in practice. Objective To aid the invited physician in determining the legitimacy of a conference, we aimed to characterize objective features of conferences for which email invitations have been received and use this information to build a decision-making guide. Design We analyzed all conference invitations received by the email of one academic plastic surgeon in a 4-month period. These conferences were organized into 3 groups based on affiliation with known professional societies. The following information was collected if available: affiliation with a professional society, type of invitation, conference location, conference format (in-person, virtual, or hybrid), conference title, conference fees, conference organizer, associated journals or publishers, abstract journal submission, grammar, headshots, time to abstract review, and acceptance. Results There were 56 unique conference ...
Source: Annals of Plastic Surgery - Category: Cosmetic Surgery Tags: Circumspectus Medicinae Source Type: research