MIT Students Trick a Computer Science Conference
If you are actively engaged in doing
science, or if you are a science student at a university,
you may be receiving e-mail invitations to submit papers
to various scientific conferences. Most of these conferences
are probably sponsored by legitimate scientific or engineering
societies. Others may be sponsored by unaffiliated organizations.
Some of the latter will repeatedly send e-mail reminders
that urge you to submit a paper. They often extend deadlines.
Some may even invite you to be on their program committee,
which means that you may be asked to review submitted
papers. Those who submit papers to some of these conferences
are sometimes surprised to find that the peer review
process is minimal or even nonexistent.
Could it be that some of these scientific
and engineering conferences are designed solely to make
money for their organizers while providing a forum for
the presentation of mediocre papers? That is the contention
of a number of web sites, one of which is SCIgen
- An Automatic CS Paper Generator.
This site recently attracted national
attention when it announced that a fake paper the site
operator's developed had been accepted for presentation
at the 9th
World Multi-Conference on Systemics, Cybernetics and
Informatics (WMSCI 2005) to be held in Orlando,
Florida, July 10-13, 2005. The SCIgen site claims to
be the product of MIT computer science grad students
Jeremy Stribling
(Fig. 1), Max
Krohn and Dan
Aguayo. But in an era of increasing scientific fraud
and misconduct, we can't really be sure, can we? While
all three are listed on the Parallel
and Distributed Operating Systems Group at MIT,
how do we know the web site is not also a fake? (Just
checked--it's real. Probably.)
The SCIgen site includes an automatic
paper generator that creates fake papers from random
sequences of text phrases. According to the site, "Our
aim here is to maximize amusement, rather than coherence.
One useful purpose for such a program is to auto-generate
submissions to 'fake' conferences; that is, conferences
with no quality standards, which exist only to make
money."
The MIT students want to present their
fake paper at WMSCI 2005 in Orlando. So they requested
donations for the conference registration, travel, hotel
ands meals. So far 165 people have donated $2311.09,
which is about $1,000 more than needed by the students,
who note on their web site, "We are still thinking
about what to do with the extra money, but we promise
it will be something awesome."
All these plans were recently jeopardized
when the WMSCI 2005 organizers learned about the bogus
paper they had accepted. According to the student's
web site, "The inevitable has come to pass. WMSCI
refunded
our registration fee, and rescinded their invitation
to speak at the conference . As you can imagine,
we are heartbroken. And still determined to go the conference.
So, here is our plea. Anyone reading this who has had
a paper accepted to WMSCI 2005 , please
contact us immediately . We would like
the chance to give your talk at the conference, and
we will pay your registration fee in return. Obviously,
secrecy is essential. So, again, if you or anyone
you know has a paper at WMSCI 2005, contact us immediately."
Various other web sites have also exposed
lax peer-review standards and conferences that seem
to be organized mainly as money machines. Some are linked
to at SCIgen
- An Automatic CS Paper Generator.
There is a very serious side to this
story, for many legitimate scientists and engineers
participate in conferences like WMSCI 2005. When conference
organizers fail to properly review some of the papers
submitted to their meeting, serious questions are raised
about the entire process.
See the Editorial
that addresses issues raised here in this installment
of The Citizen Scientist.
Forrest M. Mims III 
|
