How to spot a predatory conference, before it costs more than money: Predatory conferences - part one
This week we have a two-parter from Guest Writer Lou Peck on the rise of predatory conferences and how you can spot them (coming in part two on Friday!).
Event sponsorship remains one of the most direct ways to put a brand in front of a genuinely engaged audience. A place for a credible and trusted brand to connect and engage beyond what still today remains the most effective form of outreach, emails. Subject-specific researcher conferences have been a staple of the core marketing strategy, but the landscape is shifting. When we deep-dived recently, what we found was not just alarming but, quite frankly, disturbing. We noticed some distinct patterns with some conferences that looked credible, but once you scratch under the surface, you realise that little niggling voice in your head is there for a reason. And let me just say, this isn’t a new thing - it is getting worse, and much more sophisticated. We talk about “Paper Mills” for journals; welcome to the world of “Conference Factories”.
A number of conferences, whether found in our initial research or recommended by editorial colleagues, turned out to be either suspect or downright predatory. It’s important in any research project to question your sources and to check their validity and credibility. Their professional-looking websites and impressive-sounding programme committees were in cities highly recognisable, and usually tourist hot spots. But the deeper we dug, the worse it got. How did we combat this? We used one of our AI tools to help build a scoring mechanism to evaluate each conference systematically before it made the recommendation list. We used narratives from actual researchers on online media like Reddit about what they flagged as giveaways, other checklists and tools, and discussion forums where researchers shared examples of being scammed and of travelling to a conference that never took place because it didn’t exist. Two Ex Ordo blog posts add a layer of industry-specific guidance with top tips on what to look out for. What started as an internal tool to guide our recommendations has since grown into something much more.
We put that scoring mechanism into a different AI tool and we told it which tool we used and asked it to critically analyse it for scientific merit. That way, it would be a bit more critical as competitor output, and though complementary, it enhanced the scoring, and I am sure we will carry on developing over time.
Anything with a flag gets discounted; it is just not worth the reputational risk, even if recommended by an editorial board member or only slightly flagged. Let’s explore what that scoring process taught us so we can help ensure our industry is better safeguarded and that researchers are better protected.
What even is a predatory conference?
A predatory conference is an academic event organised as a way to generate cash, pure and simple, and to gather key private data that can be sold. Money is collected through sponsorship, registration fees, asking people to pay to talk at the conference, etc. There is little or no genuine peer review, no credible programme committee and no real academic value delivered. Sometimes they do not even exist. They are just designed to look legitimate and fool you.
You may find that a predatory conference, like a predatory journal, is a real thing and still is held with multiple smaller conferences at the same time, in the same place, but the credibility is missing. Or the conference never existed in the first place and is just a scam. It could be completely fabricated, or even a “hijacked” conference with a copy of the website and duplicated information from a genuine conference.
Nature ran a full two-part investigation and found researchers paying hundreds, sometimes thousands of dollars to attend events that delivered almost nothing. One case stayed with me. A medical researcher flew to London for what they had been told was an eye health conference. They arrived to find their fellow delegates were specialists in dentistry, pharmacology and midwifery. Multiple events had been quietly merged into one. But sessions were cancelled, there were no organisers present, and everyone in the room slowly realised they had been scammed, after travelling from around the world.
That is not a one off. That is, sadly, a business model.
The InterAcademy Partnership concluded that predatory publishing practices, conferences very much included, have evolved from a marginal problem into a global crisis threatening the integrity of academic research.
The brand risk nobody is talking about
Let’s be honest about what is at stake here for those of us on the industry side.
The assumption has always been that predatory conferences only catch out eager early career researchers wanting to make their mark in a publish or perish culture, to get the funding they need, or work towards tenure. That was never quite true, and it is even less true now, as everyone is a target; they aren’t fussy. And the consequences of getting this wrong extend well beyond a wasted sponsorship budget.
As marketing expert Seth Godin says, “Trust is scarce. It keeps going up in value because more people are hustling, going for the short hustle. If you earn attention and get the benefit of the doubt and are able over time to earn trust, you have an asset that few organisations or brands can possibly attain”.
The numbers confirm it, as according to the 2024 Edelman Trust Barometer Special Report:
Brands and Politics, trust has become a “buy or boycott” factor for 60% of global consumers.
81% of consumers need to trust a brand before they will consider buying from it.
And, critically, for anyone working in scholarly communications, the academic community is exactly the kind of niche online community that wields disproportionate influence over purchasing and partnership decisions. They talk, share and most importantly, remember.
Harvard Business Review published research in 2025 on interorganizational spillover, and found that when brands are seen as associated with others involved in wrongdoing or failure, the stakeholders assume similar risks apply to that associated brand as well. You do not have to have done anything wrong yourself, just the fact there is an association is enough.
Apply that to a predatory conference association, and the numbers become uncomfortable for our industry. Research shows:
52% of consumers have stopped buying from a brand due to poor product, service or experience (PwC Customer Experience & Loyalty Surveys).
89% of consumers explicitly expect to completely end their relationship with a brand if they lose trust (PwC/Consumer Intelligence Trust Data).
Corporate reputation accounts for 26% of total market capitalisation across the S&P 500, representing a staggering $13.8 trillion in shareholder value (Echo Research).
Recovery is possible, but it is slow, expensive and never really complete. It can take 30 years to build a reputation at a huge cost - financial, internal, system and man-hours, but just five minutes to throw it all away. Starting again is not easy, and recovery is expensive.
We live in a post-digital world where any action is instantly visible and shareable; the gap between what a brand claims and what it does is fatal. Customer centricity is no longer a differentiator but the entry ticket. And in 2025, that extended to where you choose to show up and who you choose to partner with. This is what the risk actually looks like in practice:
Your logo on a predatory conference website. Even briefly, even if you withdraw it, screenshots circulate and persist. The 2025 Edelman Brand Trust Special Report found that 73% of people say their trust in a brand increases when it authentically reflects today’s culture. Being associated with something that actively exploits that culture does the opposite.
Your speaker or colleague on a predatory programme. That association follows them professionally, appearing in conference proceedings, searches and CVs long after the event.
Your budget directly benefits scammers. Not to researchers, not to research, not to the community you support.
None of these is recoverable quickly. The 2025 Edelman Special Report also found that brands are now more trusted than governments, media and NGOs. That is a remarkable position to be in. Squandering it by not doing 10 minutes of due diligence on a conference is not a risk worth taking, or just simply creating a prompt in an AI tool to do it for you.
In part two, we’ll look at what the research community is already seeing, how a scoring mechanism can help, and the practical checks to make before committing budget, speakers or reputation, including the actual publicly available Conference Checker tool I created in Google AI Studio in one hour without any AI coding capabilities to show you what you can achieve! You are welcome to try it and see for yourself what things can be flagged.
References
On predatory conferences
Ex Ordo (2025). Avoiding Predatory Conferences, exordo.com/blog/exposing-predatory-conferences
Ex Ordo (2026). How to Spot a Fake Conference: 9 Red Flags, exordo.com/blog/9-signs-this-is-a-fake-conference
InterAcademy Partnership (2022). Combatting Predatory Academic Journals and Conferences, interacademies.org/publication/predatory-practices-report-English
Nature (2024). Predatory conferences are on the rise. Here are five ways to tackle them, nature.com/articles/d41586-024-02445-y
Nature (2024). What is it like to attend a predatory conference?, nature.com/articles/d41586-024-02358-w
On brand trust and reputation risk
Aon Global Risk Management Survey (2025). Damage to Reputation or Brand: A Critical Risk, aon.com/en/insights/reports/global-risk-management-survey/damage-to-reputation-or-brand-a-critical-risk
Consumer Trust and Relationship Termination Data (PwC Trust & Risk) pwc.ch/en/services/trust.html
Corporate Governance, Pulse Surveys, and Strategic Risk (PwC US Pulse Survey) pwc.com/us/en/library/pulse-survey.html
Edelman Trust Barometer (2024), edelman.com/trust/2024/trust-barometer
Edelman Trust Barometer Special Report: Brand Trust, From We to Me (2025), edelman.com/trust/2025/trust-barometer/special-report-brands
Shi, W. (2025). When Another Company’s Crisis Hurts Your Reputation. Harvard Business Review, November 2025, hbr.org/2025/11/when-another-companys-crisis-hurts-your-reputation
Seth Godin on the Eric Ries Show (August 2024). How to build trust and win your customer’s attention, ericriesshow.com/seth-godin/
Financial Worth of Reputation / S&P 500 Benchmarks (Echo Research) echoresearch.com/our-research/reputation-valuation/
CMO Council and Dow Jones, reported in Marketing Week. The brand safety fallout, marketingweek.com/brand-safety-fallout/
PwC Global Consumer Insights and PwC Trust Survey series, pwc.com/gx/en/issues/trust/global-trust-survey.html
Kotler, P. and Stigliano, G. (2024). Redefining Retail: 10 Guiding Principles for a Post-Digital World. Wiley wiley.com/en-br/Redefining+Retail%3A+10+Guiding+Principles+for+a+Post-Digital+World-p-9781394204700
Further reading
Lou Peck (2024). Staying Relevant in a Post Digital World, internationalbunch.com/post/staying-relevant-while-living-in-a-post-digital-world
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